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A review by books_ergo_sum
Too Late to Awaken: What Lies Ahead When There Is No Future? by Slavoj Žižek
informative
reflective
5.0
What made this philosophy book so great was something I didn't expect at all-how much of it was about Israel.
The main theme of this book was: pick your looming crisis-the climate crisis, increasingly nutty political discourse in the West, everyday people struggling while billionaires get richer-and how can we avoid it?
The simple answer: act *as if* the crisis has already happened, in order to stop it from happening.
The methodology was Hegelian, which I loved. And of course, Zizek is an icon of socialist political analysis. But the wildest part of this book (written in late 2022/early 2023, published in autumn 2023) was how immediately it was proven right.
Because his analogy for Russia's invasion of Ukraine (which had already happened)? What he foresaw as an immanent attack on Palestine by Israel (which hadn't happened yet). The JUMP SCARE that was sections explaining Itamar Ben-Gvir (who I now know way too much about, unfortunately). Or, sections on Russian officials who said:
"Imagine [that the war in Ukraine] was happening in Africa, or the Middle East. Imagine that Ukraine is Palestine. Imagine Russia is the United States."
Ummm, yeah. I can imagine that 🥴
And this scarily accurate point spilled over into the other themes of the book: the barbarism of New Right populism and the totalitarianism of Leftist political discourse; Safari subjectivity (how people intervene on the world as if they're not a part of it); how the hypocrisy of Western liberal values is a good thing; and what collective liberation even means.
Highly recommend, a very approachable philosophy book.
The main theme of this book was: pick your looming crisis-the climate crisis, increasingly nutty political discourse in the West, everyday people struggling while billionaires get richer-and how can we avoid it?
The simple answer: act *as if* the crisis has already happened, in order to stop it from happening.
The methodology was Hegelian, which I loved. And of course, Zizek is an icon of socialist political analysis. But the wildest part of this book (written in late 2022/early 2023, published in autumn 2023) was how immediately it was proven right.
Because his analogy for Russia's invasion of Ukraine (which had already happened)? What he foresaw as an immanent attack on Palestine by Israel (which hadn't happened yet). The JUMP SCARE that was sections explaining Itamar Ben-Gvir (who I now know way too much about, unfortunately). Or, sections on Russian officials who said:
"Imagine [that the war in Ukraine] was happening in Africa, or the Middle East. Imagine that Ukraine is Palestine. Imagine Russia is the United States."
Ummm, yeah. I can imagine that 🥴
And this scarily accurate point spilled over into the other themes of the book: the barbarism of New Right populism and the totalitarianism of Leftist political discourse; Safari subjectivity (how people intervene on the world as if they're not a part of it); how the hypocrisy of Western liberal values is a good thing; and what collective liberation even means.
Highly recommend, a very approachable philosophy book.