The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from dlisaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it- questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent atrocities.
The 'zero-point' of the title is ground level, rock bottom, the place to which one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin's 1922 piece 'On Ascending a High Mountain', in which Lenin considers the complexities of how one 'retreats' while keeping faith in the cause, the central simile of the climber offers a blueprint for resilience, flexibility and the persistence of hope.
It is the process of living out the Beckettian motto: Try again. Fail again. Fail better. In Žižek's hands, this becomes the formula for confronting the antagonisms of the existing world order. With a particular focus on the Middle East - the point at which all our tensions threaten to explode - Žižek argues nothing can be addressed meaningfully without such a confrontation.
Size: 129 x 198mm (paperback)
Pages: 160
Publisher: Bloomsbury
