Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Human Capitalism
by Slavoj Zizek (Author)

About the Author
Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist SLAVOJ ZIZEK is among the most distinguished intellectuals of the twenty-first century. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Columbia, and NYU and continues to teach worldwide.

About this book
The latest book from "the most despicable philosopher in the West" (New Republic) considers the new dangers and radical possibilities set in motion by advances in Big Tech.
In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world--changing it almost beyond recognition. In this extraordinary new book, renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek turns to look at the brave new world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realization of Marx's prediction that "all that is solid melts into air." With the automation of work, the virtualization of money, the dissipation of class communities, and the rise of immaterial, intellectual labor, the global capitalist edifice is beginning to crumble, more quickly than ever before--and it is now on the verge of vanishing entirely.
But what will come next? Against a backdrop of constant socio-technological upheaval, how could any kind of authentic change take place? In such a context, Žižek argues, there can be no great social triumph--because lasting revolution has already come into the scene, like a thief in broad daylight, stealing into sight right before our very eyes. What we must do now is wake up and see it.
Urgent as ever, Like a Thief in Broad Daylight illuminates the new dangers as well as the radical possibilities thrown up by today's technological and scientific advances, and their electrifying implications for us all.

Brief contents
Introduction: First the Bad News, Then the Good News . . . Which May Be Even Worse
1. The State of Things
    The Topsy-Turvy World of Global Capitalism
    Virtual Capitalism and the End of Nature
    Of Mice and Men
2. Vagaries of Power
    Lenin Navigating in Uncharted Territories
    Elections, Popular Pressure, Inertia
    Welcome to the Boredom of Interesting Times!
3. From Identity to Universality
    What Agatha Knew
    How to Fight Huntingtons Disease
    The Eternal Return of the Same Class Struggle
4. Ernst Lubitsch, Sex, and Indirectness
    From Indirectness to Ratatatata
    Against Contractual Sex
    Cynicism, Humour and Engagement
    A Leninist Gesture in La La Land and in Black Panther
Conclusion: For How Long Can We Act Globally and Think Locally?
Notes

Pages: 240 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press (October 3, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1609809750
ISBN-13: 978-1609809751