{"title":"Books by Alenka Zupancic","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780262534130","title":"What is Sex?","description":"Why sexuality is at the point of a “short circuit” between ontology and epistemology.   Consider sublimation—conventionally understood as a substitute satisfaction for missing sexual satisfaction. But what if, as Lacan claims, we can get exactly the same satisfaction that we get from sex from talking (or writing, painting, praying, or other activities)? The point is not to explain the satisfaction from talking by pointing to its sexual origin, but that the satisfaction from talking is itself sexual. The satisfaction from talking contains a key to sexual satisfaction (and not the other way around)—even a key to sexuality itself and its inherent contradictions. The Lacanian perspective would make the answer to the simple-seeming question, “What is sex?” rather more complex. In this volume in the Short Circuits series, Alenka Zupancic approaches the question from just this perspective, considering sexuality a properly philosophical problem for psychoanalysis; and by psychoanalysis, she means that of Freud and Lacan, not that of the kind of clinician practitioners called by Lacan “orthopedists of the unconscious.” Zupancic argues that sexuality is at the point of a “short circuit” between ontology and epistemology. Sexuality and knowledge are structured around a fundamental negativity, which unites them at the point of the unconscious. The unconscious (as linked to sexuality) is the concept of an inherent link between being and knowledge in their very negativity.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56232247296373,"sku":"9780262534130","price":23.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780262534130_1c81a720-871a-459e-a5a6-a10c4fc8b406.jpg?v=1786012549"},{"product_id":"9781509561209","title":"Disavowal","description":"This book argues that the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal best renders the structure underlying our contemporary social response to traumatic and disturbing events, from climate change to unsettling tectonic shifts in our social tissue. Unlike denialism and negation, disavowal functions by fully acknowledging what we disavow. Zupancic contends that disavowal, which sustains some belief by means of ardently proclaiming the knowledge of the opposite, is becoming a predominant feature of our social and political life. She also shows how the libidinal economy of disavowal is a key element of capitalist economy.    The concept of fetishistic disavowal already exposes the objectified side of the mechanism of the disavowal, which follows the general formula: I know well, but all the same, the object-fetish allows me to disregard this knowledge. Zupancic adds another twist by showing how, in the prevailing structure of disavowal today, the mere act of declaring that we know becomes itself an object-fetish by which we intercept the reality of that very knowledge. This perverse deployment of knowledge deprives it of any reality.    This structure of disavowal can be found not only in the more extreme and dramatic cases of conspiracy theories and re-emerging magical thinking, but even more so in the supposedly sober continuation of business as usual, combined with the call to adapt to the new reality. To disrupt this social embedding of disavowal, it is not enough to change the way we think: things need to change, and hence the way they think for us.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302221132149,"sku":"9781509561209","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781509561209_98b8029a-3ce7-41da-a086-e2ce433e2daa.jpg?v=1786022205"},{"product_id":"9781531501044","title":"Let Them Rot","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA provocative\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e, highly accessible journey to the heart of Sophocles' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAntigone\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e elucidating why it keeps resurfacing as a central text of Western thought and Western culture.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There is probably no classical text that has inspired more interpretation, critical attention, and creative response than Sophocles' \u003ci\u003eA\u003c\/i\u003e\u003ci\u003entigone\u003c\/i\u003e. The general perspective from which the book is written could be summarized with this simple question: What is it about the figure of Antigone that keeps haunting us? Why do all these readings and rewritings keep emerging? To what kind of always contemporary contradiction does the need, the urge to reread and reimagine \u003ci\u003eAntigone\u003c\/i\u003e—in all kinds of contexts and languages—correspond? \u003cbr\u003e As key anchor points of this general interrogation, three particular \"obsessions\" have driven the author's thinking and writing about \u003ci\u003eAntigone\u003c\/i\u003e. First is the issue of violence. The violence in \u003ci\u003eAntigone\u003c\/i\u003e is the opposite of \"graphic\" as we have come to know it in movies and in the media; rather, it is sharp and piercing, it goes straight to the bone. It is the violence of language, the violence of principles, the violence of desire, the violence of subjectivity. Then there is the issue of funerary rites and their role in appeasing the specific \"undeadness\" that seems to be the other side of human life, its irreducible undercurrent that death alone cannot end and put to rest. This issue prompted the author to look at the relationship between language, sexuality, death, and \"second death.\" The third issue, which constitutes the focal point of the book, is Antigone's statement that if it were her children or husband lying unburied out there, she would let them rot and not take it upon herself to defy the decree of the state. The author asks, how does this exclusivist, singularizing claim (she would do it only for Polyneices), which she uses to describe the \"unwritten law\" she follows, tally with Antigone's universal appeal and compelling power? Attempting to answer this leads to the question of what this particular (Oedipal) family's misfortune, of which Antigone chooses to be the guardian, shares with the general condition of humanity. Which in turn forces us to confront the seemingly self-evident question: \"What is incest?\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eLet Them Rot \u003c\/i\u003eis Alenka Zupančič's absorbing and succinct guided tour of the philosophical and psychoanalytic issues arising from the Theban trilogy. Her original and surprising intervention into the broad and prominent field of study related to Sophocles' \u003ci\u003eAntigone \u003c\/i\u003eilluminates the classical text's ongoing relevance and invites a wide readership to become captivated by its themes.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303700148597,"sku":"9781531501044","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781531501044_fb1e7810-9f86-479f-bb43-eac99dbfcd8f.jpg?v=1786023382"},{"product_id":"9781739516109","title":"Let Them Rot","description":"What is the relation between family misfortune and desire? Why must we bury the dead? What is to come for those unburied? How to distinguish the endless stream of graphic violence from violence that goes straight to the bone? How does language make up not only the law, but also unwritten laws? In Let Them Rot Alenka Zupancic takes up the ancient figure of Antigone and finds a blueprint for the politics of desire. Not desire as consumption, enjoying what is offered, but desire s oblivion to what came before. Such politics says: 'No, this world must end and I will be the embodiment of that end.' This is not self-satisfied destruction for destruction's sake; it is existence with consequences beyond the predictable. Zupancic asks: 'Why desire?' And this question of desire, which may be the only question, takes the form of a 'no' that is also an 'I.' 'Writing my book on Antigone, I thought: 'There we go, the subject is closed - let's go to sleep.' And then along came Zupancic with her take and compelled me to rethink everything I did. In other words - and this is difficult for me to say - she is better than me here.' - Slavoj Zizek","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312778162549,"sku":"9781739516109","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781739516109_8dff9511-ffa5-4f5f-b0f0-a40c2d94166c.jpg?v=1786024888"},{"product_id":"ethics-of-the-real","title":"Ethics of the Real","description":"The idea of Kantian ethics is both simple and revolutionary: it proposes a moral law independent of any notion of a pre-established Good or any ‘human inclination’ such as love, sympathy or fear. In attempting to interpret such a revolutionary proposition in a more ‘humane’ light, and to turn Kant into our contemporary—someone who can help us with our own ethical dilemmas—many Kantian scholars have glossed over its apparent paradoxes and impossible claims. This book is concerned with doing exactly the opposite. Kant, thank God, is not our contemporary; he stands against the grain of our times. Lacan on the face of it appears the very antithesis of Kant—the wild theorist of psychoanalysis compared to the sober Enlightenment thinker. His concept of the Real, however, provides perhaps the most useful backdrop to this new interpretation of Kantian ethics. Constantly juxtaposing her readings of the two philosophers. Alenka Zupancic summons up an ‘ethics of the Real’, and clears the ground for a radical restoration of the disruptive element in ethics.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57490231034229,"sku":"9781844677870","price":19.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781844677870.jpg?v=1786442115"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-alenka-zupancic.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}