I’ve now read Living in the End Times. It’s a very readable book, full of ideas, odd juxtapositions and extremely wide-ranging. But it’s ultimately all a bit disappointing. While Zizek is obviously a great fan of movies, this didn’t feel like it had the arc of an overall story to it. Rather it felt more like channel-surfing – almost deliberately written for people with short-attention spans. There are lots of good bits, some I found less interesting, but you keep going, knowing that he won’t sustain that line for too long, and will soon be on something else. It’s a strange writing style, but quite possibly very in-tune with our times. The overall order of the book seems initially quite clever – its focus is on the ‘four horseman’ of our apocalypse (environment, economy, biogenetics and social divisions) and structured by the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) – but at times this structure disappears and it becomes merely episodic, and the focus is often quite distant.

I’m glad I read it, and the bits on Sloterdijk will be useful references, but I for one really hope that Zizek follows through on his promised Hegel book rather than continues writing in this vein.