The Parallax View

In Zizek's long-awaited magnum opus, he theorizes the "parallax gap" in the ontological, the scientific, and the political-and rehabilitates dialectical materialism. The Parallax View is Slavoj Zizek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Zizek himself describes it as his magnum opus.Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position.Zizek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet.From this consideration of parallax, Zizek begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism. Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives.In The Parallax View, Zizek, with