Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View

Kelsey Wood (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Philosophy (any)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2006

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

Resources

Without question Slavoj Žižek is one of today’s most important thinkers, and The Parallax View (2006) may be his most challenging and provocative work. He has himself described it as his magnum opus.

In previous works, Žižek has written – with humour, lucidity, and extraordinary erudition – on St. Paul, Lenin, globalization, postmodern multiculturalism, fundamentalism, tolerance, political correctness, film, and subjectivity. He is both a psychoanalyst and a dialectical materialist philosopher, and is best known for interpreting contemporary culture in light of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. As is well-known, Lacan changed the course of psychoanalysis by supplementing Freud’s emphasis on the biological aspect of human existence with inquiries into the symbolic and linguistic character of human interrelations. Lacan showed that because any human subject is split from within by the acquisition of language,...

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2680 words

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "The Parallax View". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 October 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23001, accessed 09 June 2026.]