Night of the World : Traversing the Ideology of Objectivity

By situating objectivity at the level of ideology, while placing it within a dynamic, experimental and, at times, unorthodox interplay with Hegelian and Lacanian philosophy, The Night of the World offers a unique and radical re-thinking of objectivity. Encompassing a constellational array of wide-ranging subjects, from popular culture, politics, history, science, and philosophy, while deploying an engaging prose that is both incisive and seamlessly tangential, Smecker is both an ally with, and emerging voice in, the field of Zizekian dialectics. Incorporating Zizek's philosophy, Smecker speculates over both objectivity and ideology, evoking methods of thought not so prevalent since German Idealism was all the rage. In the spirit of Kierkegaard, The Night of the World is the result of an imaginative hypothesis. And that is only the half of it. Written in a style that will undoubtedly leave the reader itching to read it again once finished, The Night of the World is an ongoing engagement with an abundance of additional postulations, whose sole purpose is to produce more products of thought. , Cover Title page Copyright Contents Preface: In which the premises will eventually come out ... Prologue: Identifying the symptom The fourth estate and its symptom Unpacking objectivity A not-so enlightening Enlightenment The Long Awaited Introduction I. Fraud: The Imaginary 1 On alienation and separation 2 The mirror in the notion 3 Loss of a loss 4 Self as the object of the subject 5 The generative void 6 The concept, in which all knowledge wanders 7 Rebecca, a model for dialectical materialism 8 The logic of the signifier 9 The zero and the one. 10. From objectivity to the subject11. The parental role of consciousness, and the emergence of the fantastic desire 12. The mirror in our fantasy 13. An ontology of objectivity II. Absence: The Symbolic Order 14. Objective certainty 15. The infrangible alliance between the Imaginary and the Symbolic, as facilitated by the "real-abstraction" 16. The significance of Symbolic authority 17. Getting up close and personal with the big Other 18. Supremacy of the Symbolic, repression of the Real 19. Speculative Identity: The heart of the subjective-objective analysis. 20. The desired object is the subject21. Fetishizing content 22. Because it's desire, in the guise of the concept, that structures objectivity 23. Gaze and voice III. Impossibility: The Real 24. The three modalities of the Real 25. The grimace of the Real 26. The Real as non-sense 27. A conscious encounter with the Real 28. Vis imaginativa: the Real of Spirit 29. We are not so sure we know anything ... 30. The object of knowledge and its Real predicament 31. Ethics of a political philosophy 32. The Real antagonism that is subject 33. "Is" is all there is ... or is it? IV. Objectivity as Today's Ruling Ideology34. Waiting for Godot and the infinite deferral 35. Is it drive or desire, or, both? 36. Intellectual objectivity as an ideology of exploitation 37. The ideological notion of objectivity 38. Inconsistency as the innermost constituent of our reality: The passage from the universal to the particular 39. The Last Man 40. The cunning of reason 41. And so that agitating "Thing" about objective news reporting 42. The objet petit a of journalism Notes. The Night of the World seamlessly weaves through complex philosophical conjunctions and cultural practices in order to articulate a theory of ideology for today's world. Smecker argues that objectivity has become the prevailing ideological form, but he refuses to surrender the terrain of objectivity to ideology. His book is a struggle against this ideological structure in an effort to reclaim a new mode of objectivity that has its basis in the contradictions of subjectivity. It provides a thorough overview of the ways that contemporary ideology penetrates into our being and proffers a political antidote.--Todd McGowan, Author of Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis Cover; Title page; Copyright; Contents; Preface: In which the premises will eventually come out ... ; Prologue: Identifying the symptom; The fourth estate and its symptom; Unpacking objectivity; A not-so enlightening Enlightenment; The Long Awaited Introduction; I. Fraud: The Imaginary; 1 On alienation and separation; 2 The mirror in the notion; 3 Loss of a loss; 4 Self as the object of the subject; 5 The generative void; 6 The concept, in which all knowledge wanders; 7 Rebecca, a model for dialectical materialism; 8 The logic of the signifier; 9 The zero and the one.;An imaginative and incisive exposition of everything you do not know you know about ideology, and ruthlessly then some. An imaginative and incisive exposition of everything you do not know you know about ideology, and ruthlessly then some.