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Zizek, Slavoj : Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle

Verso Books, London, England, 2004

ISBN 1844670015

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 188 pages. The author's book-length account on subject. One of the most important books of our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions, particularly the Softcover Edition. Published in a small and limited first print run as part of the author's "Wo es War" Series for Verso and as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Slavoj Zizek's "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle". THE single most thoughtful assessment of the American War in Iraq. The title is borrowed from Freud. "In order to render the strange logic of dreams, Freud quoted the old joke about the borrowed kettle: 'I never borrowed a kettle from you. I returned it to you unbroken. The kettle was already broken when I got it from you'. Such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments confirms exactly what it attempts to deny: That I returned a broken kettle to you. That same inconsistency characterizes the justification of the attack on Iraq: A link between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda was transformed into the threat posed by the regime to the region, which was then further transformed into the threat posed to everyone (the United States and Britain, especially) by weapons of mass destruction. When no significant weapons were found, we were treated to the same bizarre logic: OK, the two labs we found don't really prove anything, but even if there are no WMD in Iraq, there are other good reasons to topple a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. Spares nothing and nobody, neither pathetically impotent pacifism nor hypocritical sympathy with the suffering of the Iraqi people. As piercing as Zizek can be about the rhetorical excesses of the Bush Administration (his reading of Rumsfeld's infamous 'known knowns' speech is a tour-de-force), he doesn't spare what he sees as the smug complacencies of Old Europe and the Left, putting them under the general rubric of convenient pacifism and selective outrage. Simultaneously invigorating, depressing, and maddening, Zizek's book reveals him to be an intellectual made for these times" (Publishers Weekly). Zizek is all that, and so much more. He is a genuine philosopher of and for our time: An anti-humanist, radical thinker steeped in the great Continental philosophical tradition (in the mold of Freud and Lacan) who is formally trained in philosophy and psychoanalysis, but is neither an academic philosopher nor practicing psychoanalyst. Like his predecessors, he is a Master Thinker with a rigorous, original, and inescapably tragic insight into and understanding of the void that is the human condition. "The Master of the counter-intuitive observation" (The New Yorker Magazine). An absolute "must-have" title for Slavoj Zizek collectors. This title is a contemporary classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. One of the most brilliant philosopher-thinkers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SLAVOJ ZIZEK TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1844670015.

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