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The Parallax View

2006 · by Slavoj Žižek

An irreducible gap between two perspectives – in philosophy, science and politics.

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Introduction

A long book published by MIT Press in 2006. Parallax – the apparent shift of an object when the observer changes position – becomes Žižek’s model for gaps that no higher synthesis can close: between philosophy and neuroscience, between economy and politics, between subject and object. He develops the idea with Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Lacan and applies it to quantum physics, cognitive science and Christian theology, interspersed with digressions on films and jokes. In politics he ends by recommending the stubborn passivity of Melville’s Bartleby, with his “I would prefer not to”, as a starting point for resistance.

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