Žižek Slavoj: Nedjeljivi ostatak (Ogled o Schellingu i srodnim pitanjima)

Slavoj Žižek: The Indivisible Remainder

An overview of Schelling and related issues

Slavoj Žižek (1949) has been one of the most famous philosophers worldwide since the mid-90s. He is the author and editor of numerous books in the field of psychoanalytical-philosophical theory of culture, science, art, history of ideas and contemporary society, politics and media; as a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he is a permanent guest lecturer at several universities and private academies in America and Europe. The narrowest selection of Žižek's works, to which this book certainly belongs, is Znak, signifier, letter. A contribution to the materialist theory of signifier practice, Belgrade: Mladost, 1976; The Subline Object of Ideology, London - New York: Verso, 1989. (translation: Sublimni Objekt Ideologije, Zagreb - Sarajevo; Arkzin, Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis 2002); Tarrying with the Negative. Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993; For They Know Not What They Do. Enjoyment as a Political Factor, London - New York: Verso 1991.; The Ticklish Subject. The Absent Center of Political Ontology, London - New York, Verso 1999. (translation: Skakljivi subjekt, Sarajevo: Šahimpašić, 2005). These books form part of an already inexhaustible oeuvre which, in terms of effect and liveliness of approach to classical, modern and contemporary philosophy, is incomparable to any author today, except for the influence of Umberto Ecco at the turn of the 80s and 90s of the 20th century, that is, the very author whom Žižek unwisely called "Spaghetti - semioticians". Considering such significance of Žižek on the global academic and cultural scene, it is particularly significant that this book represents a copy from his "A production", as Žižek himself expresses it in the categorization of his works.

Kljiga The Indivisible Remainder. The essay on Schelling and related issues is one of Žižek's three theoretical-philosophical essays (see also The Sublime Object of Ideology from 1989 and Tarrying with the Negative from 1993) which are dedicated to classical German philosophy and its different thematic development in contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis and critical theory of ideology, and which philosophically and theoretically represent the central if not the most significant part of his oeuvre. The book was edited and translated for the Croatian edition by Nebojša Jovanović, an established author in the field of psychoanalytic theory of culture, art and media. As the co-director of one of Žižek's books (The Sublime Object of Ideology) and the translator of two further books and a number of smaller texts of a related theoretical genre, Nebojša Jovanović is a reliable guarantor of the solidity and quality of this project at the publisher "Demeter", which is by no means an understandable feature in the era of rampant superficiality, irresponsibility and presumptuousness in translation. 

This book by Žižek consists of three large chapters that are thematically organized into two parts; in addition, the first two chapters are devoted to German classical idealism: 1. Schelling - per se: "Orgasm silâ", in which the author very thoroughly investigates the position of the late Schelling, especially in the work "The Age of the World", using positively and critically the works of several contemporary interpreters of Schelling's work, so that the book is both a report and a contribution to the most recent discussion about Schelling; in the following (chapter 2. Schelling - for - Hegel: ("The Disappearing Mediator") the author elaborates the relationship between the philosophical position of the "mythological" Schelling and Hegel's speculative idealism, which is standardly interpreted as mutually exclusive, and offers a provocative idea of continuity between Schelling and Hegel instead of irreducible difference. Although such an interpretation is not unique (Žižek actually joins the interpretation of the German author Wolfram Hogrebe in this), his discussion of Schelling is completely original in its paradoxical methodological approach: instead of hermeneutic immanentism, he moves "extremely" immanently, always using other interpreters and always to coming from the background of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of subject and language. This theoretical background in this book is presented, also typically Žižek's, in the second part entitled "Soulmates" (this is chapter 3. Quantum physics with Lacan), namely, not as an academic-scholastic justification of the method and interpretation of the classical philosophical heritage, but through the confrontation of the basic categories of Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of the subject, language and science with some contemporary scientific-theoretical speculations under the auspices of "quantum physics", some aspects of which Žižek labels as Newage ideology. Hence, Žižek's own theoretical stronghold ("Lacanian psychoanalytical critique of philosophy") appears here in a completely new and provocative context, which represents a specific epistemological contribution in the field of contemporary philosophical theories of science. 

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