Slavoj has sent me more or less the whole text of his forthcoming book on Hegel called Less Than Nothing so that I can write some preparatory essays for it in the Guardian and other publications. What I shall also be doing is keeping a running commentary going on here as I read the text. It runs to about 1200 words, so it might take quite a long time to get through this and the book is coming out in April. What will do the dip into it, quote excerpts and generally comment on what I think of the content. This is very exciting and I hope people will follow what is going on here and comment on it. I have had a quick look through the text, well, some of it, and it is a complex but engaging piece of work as far as I can see and it raises all manner of issues. The first half of the book is a reading of Hegel as retrospective teleology, that is he rejects the usual reading of Hegel which sees him as somebody who has already made his mind up about the absolute and his dialectic is there merely to prove that everything that happens is part of that absolute. Zizek, as you might expect, turns Hegel on his head and points out that essentially, he was presenting the universe as something which emerges from contingency rather than necessity.
I hope you will follow this and that we can all get prepared for the publication of the blockbuster later this year.
ummm, 1200 pages that should be, not words!
You should put a feedburner widget or something, so that your updates come straight to our inboxes.
If only I knew how to do that! But I’ll find out.
Maybe you should tweet your thoughts paragraph by paragraph.
maybe I should. I fear that may take several years though. I will start soon.
I can’t wait until April 2nd, so please keep us updated often!