English Professor Publishes Book of Critical Essays with Slavoj Zizek  

Professor Russell Sbriglia (left) and Slavoj Zizek (right), co-authors of Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism.

Professor Russell Sbriglia has published a new book with internationally renowned academic Slavoj Zizek. Titled Subject Lessons: Hegel, Lacan, and the Future of Materialism, the book, which Sbriglia co-edited with Zizek, assembles the work of a number of scholars at the forefront of philosophical and literary theory, their own included. 

Sbriglia is an assistant professor of English and director of Undergraduate Literature Studies at Seton Hall. He is also the editor of the book Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Zizek. 
Slavoj Zizek is the author of more than 50 books. Foreign Policy not only describes him as "a celebrity philosopher," but has also named him one of its "Top 100 Global Thinkers." In addition, The Chronicle of Higher Education has dubbed him "the Elvis of cultural theory," and VICE has proclaimed him "the most dangerous philosopher in the West." 

Northwestern University Press, the publisher of Subject Lessons, notes that

…the contributors to this volume — many of whom stand at the forefront of contemporary Hegel and Lacan scholarship — agree with neovitalist thinkers that material reality is ontologically incomplete, in a state of perpetual becoming, yet they do so with one crucial difference: they maintain that this is the case not in spite of but rather because of the subject. 

Brown University Professor Joan Copjec, a prominent American Lacanian psychoanalytic theorist, says of Subject Lessons:

A band of new materialists has come after the subject, knives drawn. In what ways do these thinkers differ from materialists past? From each other? What do they mean when they speak of materialism, of objects, or subjects? By confronting these basic questions directly, the essays in this collection cut through the babble of confused debate to offer clear accounts of the issues at stake.

Sbriglia and Zizek are scheduled to appear at a launch party for the book on the evening of Friday, April 24 at Labyrinth Books in Princeton, co-sponsored by the English Department of Princeton University.

Zizek will appear on campus at Seton Hall the evening prior on Thursday, April 23 to present a public talk titled "The Rise of Obscene Masters," and again on the morning of April 24 to lead a faculty seminar for the College of Arts and Sciences' Center for the Humanities in the Public Sphere (CHIPS) on "The Apocalypse of a Wired Brain."

Video of Slavoj Zizek's prior appearance on campus, "Samuel Beckett as the Writer of Political Abstraction; or, What Can Beckett Tell Us about the Alt-Right and Political Correctness?"

Categories: Arts and Culture