"The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 167
It All Adds Up (1994)
Context: Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, political thinkers, to name only a few of the categories affected, must woo their readers, viewers, listeners, from distraction. To this we must add, for simple realism demands it, that these same writers, painters, etc., are themselves the children of distraction. As such, they are peculiarly qualified to approach the distracted multitudes. They will have experienced the seductions as well as the destructiveness of the forces we have been considering here. This is the destructive element in which we do not need to be summoned to immerse ourselves, for we were born to it.
“Few thinkers illustrate the contradictions of contemporary capitalism better than the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek.”
John Gray, "The Violent Visions of Slavoj Žižek". The Guardian, July 12, 2012
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Slavoj Žižek 99
Slovene philosopher 1949Related quotes
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Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 12, Production Of Spatial Configurations, p. 385
From the Author's Preface to First Edition (1918)
Space—Time—Matter (1952)
Context: It was my wish to present this great subject as an illustration of the itermingling of philosophical, mathematical, and physical thought, a study which is dear to my heart. This could be done only by building up the theory systematically from the foundations, and by restricting attention throughout to the principles. But I have not been able to satisfy these self-imposed requirements: the mathematician predominates at the expense of the philosopher.
“Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots”
Variant: He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 13, Crisis In The Space Economy Of Capitalism, p. 442