Media, ideology, and politics. Zizek's reception: fifty shades of gray ideology / Paul A. Taylor -- The sublime absolute: Althusser, Zizek, and the critique of ideology / Agon Hamza -- Student fantasies: a Zizekian perspective on the 2012 Quebec Student Uprising/ Louis-Paul Willis -- The objective: the configuration of trauma in the "War on terror", or the sublime object of the medium / Richard Bégin -- Popular culture. The priority of the example: Hegel contra film studies / Todd McGowan -- Imagining the end times: ideology, the contemporary disaster movie and contagion / Matthew Beaumont -- Zizek and the 80s movie song: there is a non-relationship / Graham Wolfe -- A little piece of the reel: prosthetic vocality and the obscene surplus of record production / Mickey Vallee -- White elephants and dark matter(s): watching the World Cup with Slavoj Zizek / Tim Walters -- Film and cinema. Contingent encounters and retroactive signification: zooming in on the dialectical core of Zizek's film criticism / Fabio Vighi -- How to kill your mother: heavenly creatures, desire, and Zizek's return to ideology / Cindy Zeiher -- Dialogue with American scepticism: Cavell and Zizek on sexual difference / Keiko Ogata -- From interpassive to interactive cinema: a genealogy of the moving image of cynicism / Tamasamas Nagypal -- Beyond the beyond: cgi and the anxiety of overperfection / Hugh Manon -- Social media and the internet. Slavoj Zizek as internet philosopher / Clint Burnham -- The real internet / Jodi Dean -- Enjoying social media / Matthew Flisfeder -- Is torture part of your social network / Tara Atluri
Since the early 1970s, film, media, and cultural theorists have appealed to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory in order to discern processes of subjectivization, representation, and ideological interpellation. However, beginning with the work of theorists such as Jacqueline Rose, Joan Copjec, and Slavoj Zizek, a new approach to Lacan has been advanced, one which pays closer attention to concepts such as sexual difference, the 'objet petit a' (the object-cause of desire), fantasy, the Real, enjoyment, and the drive. Zizek in particular has advanced a political-philosophical re-interpretation of Lacan that has spawned a whole new wave of film, media, and cultural theory that shows a marked difference from an early Lacanian approach. The contributors in this book take up a specifically Zizekian approach to studies of cinema and media, both old and new, raising questions about power, ideology, sexual difference, and enjoyment. Including chapters written by key figures in Zizekian film, media, and cultural theory such as Jodi Dean, Todd McGowan, Paul A. Taylor, and Fabio Vighi, it concludes with a response from Zizek himself
