Night of the World – Traversing the Ideology of Objectivity - Softcover

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

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.