'Zizek’s passion for the real: the real of terror, the terror of the real' in The Truth of Zizek. Editors: Bowman, P. and Stamp, R. Publisher Continuum Press 2007 Pagination: 45-60 ISBN: 9780826490612

My chapter in this 'riveting collection of essays [which] provokes from [Zizek] a response that might rank among the very best of his many polemical interventions' (Rifkin, Middlesex University) interrogates Zizek’s mobilising of Lacanian psychoanalysis to develop his account and critique of contemporary capitalism. I argue that Zizek idealises the notion of the political act as an event breaking with an established order, and does so in part because his account of contemporary capitalism is so thin that this notion of the radical political act comes to appear a necessity. This critique of Zizek’s work furthers my research on contemporary capitalism that draws upon the various critiques of Marxism and insisting upon a critical engagement with the hegemonic social structures.