Zero Point

What is zero point? It is the place of annihilation, whether in the form of the artificial intelligence singularity, global nuclear war unleashed by the current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza or the destruction of the environment. It is the moment when it will finally, definitively be too late to speak out. It is where we are headed. In this book, Slavoj iek confronts the ethical, political and personal consequences of speaking - and the passive drift towards zero point which is the outcome of failing to do so. Taking in the rise of the far right in Europe and the conflict in Ukraine, but with a particular focus on the war in Gaza as the nexus of global antagonisms, Zero Point disavows apolitical acts of solidarity or moral judgements and challenges us, even in the ‘pure now‘ of grief and horror, to think. Drawing on Lenin, Lacan and the thinkers of the French Revolution, Zizek trains the formidable lens of his erudition on events in Europe, Ukraine and Gaza, but also on himself. Zero Point includes a unique piece assembled chronologically from writings, sometimes fragmentary and raw, composed by iek in the wake of his October 2023 speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The speech was interrupted by local politicians backed by police, widely condemned for relativization and Hamas sympathizing, and Zizek himself accused of anti-Semitism. In Zero Point, the reader has a front-row seat to what follows as Zizek processes the shock, the criticism, the hurt - and evolves his thinking on truth and courage. Zero Point is a collection of essays on the global geopolitical situation, a philosophical examination of truth, grief and history - and a challenge to reject simple explanations, to go deeper in the face of disorientation and despair, and to confront entrophy by speaking without safety.