The Plague of Fantasies (Wo Es War)
by Slavoj Zizek

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Book Reviews of The Plague of Fantasies (Wo Es War)

Book Review: A plague on whom?
Summary: 3 Stars

Zizek is a problematic author for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's impossible to get him to stick to a subject, as a result of which his books all tend to fuse into each other. This book isn't really about "a plague of fantasies", nor is it about the ideological underpinnings of everyday life (which is what it says on the back cover). It's about whatever happens to be going through Zizek's head at the time, on the basis of some tenuous link with the previous snippet (or at least, that's how it reads). Admittedly, there is quite a long section on fantasy in the first chapter, which explains Zizek's view very clearly. As for the rest of the book, expect everything from Hegel and Brecht to MASH and Hitchcock.

Zizek's style makes him attractive to people who fancy themselves as culturally literate, who know about enough critical theory to follow his often extremely heavy theoretical expositions and/or who see themselves as rather "radical", without asking too many questions about the contents of this "radicalism". Readers who don't fall into any of these categories are likely to be disappointed, and to find themselves asking why Zizek is taken so seriously nowadays. There isn't much sustained argument to convince the unconverted, and Zizek's main selling point is his flamboyant style. He likes to view his work as a plague on capitalism, but one sometimes gets the impression that it is really more of a plague on the radical academics who are the main target of his polemical bile.

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