Book review - Surplus Enjoyment by Slavoj Žižek

In Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed, Žižek reiterates what he has already been saying for the last thirty years. As the saying should go: if one has read his acclaimed The Sublime Object of Ideology one has gained adequate knowledge of most of his works. This general strand—which passes through all his works—what is it? In other words, what is the essence of Mr. Žižek’s works? If one were to approach this superficially, one would say that he tries to analyse contemporary literature, movies, and other pop-culture phenomena, and reach a conclusion which enlightens the reader of the discrepancies of contemporary life, i.e. help create the examined life. But, like everything else surrounding Mr. Žižek, it is not so simple. However, to save the readers’ valuable time, a defining feature of (most of) Žižek’s books is the promotion of Lacanian structural psychoanalysis. If not in absolute agreement with its claims, he nonetheless features it as either an authoritative reference point, a source of inspiration, or by way of grafting it onto other forms of analysis—such as the Marxist/Marxian one. To go a step further, his public persona of a Marxist thinker has helped give relevance to his work. People, students and young people in particular, have become more ‘Left-leaning’ than ever before. It helps to discuss existential matters in a classroom, and better still to extrapolate one’s understanding of logic. However, when one’s actual existence is scrutinised, and one’s means of continuing to live are endangered, philosophy itself becomes more than a struggle over intellectual pursuits—the intellectual informs and reflects the very real material conditions of one’s actual existence. That is to say, in more ways than in an ordinary sense, one has a stake in the conclusions produced by these matters of philosophy. And so, Mr. Žižek prospers. His titles include no less than ‘The most dangerous philosopher in the west’. Here lies one of the biggest problems that plague us today: the sensational nonsense with which we greet our modern-day celebrity-thinkers. Žižek is a Marxist that threatens with his Stalinism, all the while insisting that we should return to Hegel through Marx. In the end, this Marxism of his bares no semblance of emancipatory will. If one were to congratulate him for anything, it would be for his making of Marx, and of Marxism, a lifestyle brand. To add to his accolades, Mr. Žižek is the greatest Marxist thinker that could be enjoyed by the capitalist simpleton of today. Just like our contemporary politics, his Marxism is only there to please us as yet another form of cheap entertainment. Mr. Žižek acts as Capitalism’s Court Jester (Rockhill 2023).