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

3.0

I dare say this is an introductory material if one is already fairly familiar with Zizek, with modern philosophy, and with popular culture (which runs the gamut in this book from Hitchcock to Shakespeare, detective novels, science fiction and pornography). I am somewhat familiar with Zizek, philosophy, and pop culture, and I was still occasionally at sea trying to understand the points Zizek is making. He is, as is his wont, all over the place, circling wildly around his point and approaching from any and every angle. Mostly it has to do with the boundary between Reality and the Real, why that boundary is necessary, and the placeholders for the Real that we create in order to help us stay sane. We cannot, according to Lacan and perhaps Zizek, actually handle the gaping void of the Real. I think.