A review by annoying17
Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture by Slavoj Žižek

3.5

Zizek is one of the worst authors I’ve ever read, his repetition of the same three phrases gets exhausting 30 pages in and is only made worse by the density of this book, which required me to reread paragraphs and chapters often to understand a word or phrase that was central to the topic at hand for 5 pages before never being mentioned again. This book is a very clear representation of Zizek’s flow of consciousness, explaining more about the insanity of its author than the topic it supposedly covers (its analysis of Lacan is deep and thorough but, to me at least, too dense and difficult to be a proper introduction to Lacan), and I genuinely loved that aspect. I’m able to look past the repeating phrases, brief explorations, rapid topic changes, and rushed sections as they all make sense within the framework of a Zizek book, but I could never recommend this to anyone else ever. I have about four sections saved in notes on my phone that blew me away, and reading them back after finishing it’s very funny how little they have to do with the main themes of Lacan and pop culture. Zizek is incredibly lucky to be as smart and funny as he is, it carries his work much further than I believe it really deserves, which I’m very thankful for as the topics covered are deeply interesting and worth investigation.