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Dialectic at Its Impurest: Žižek’s Materialism of Less Than Nothing

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Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism
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Abstract

In a time when Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, “stresses dialectical materialism as a way to deepen reform,”2 dialectical materialism seems nothing but an atavistic remainder of a past long gone, a notion which in an era of prevalent cynical dis-tantiation and emerging “new materialisms” rightfully triggers ironiz-ing responses. Hence, it is all the more curious that Slavoj Žižek should consciously place his philosophical project under the “anachronistic” banner of “dialectical materialism.” Along these lines, Less Than Nothing (2012), Žižek’s magnum opus, bears the subtitle Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, while his recent Absolute Recoil (2014) is subtitled Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism.

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Agon Hamza Frank Ruda

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© 2016 Simon Hajdini

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Hajdini, S. (2016). Dialectic at Its Impurest: Žižek’s Materialism of Less Than Nothing. In: Hamza, A., Ruda, F. (eds) Slavoj Žižek and Dialectical Materialism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137538611_7

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