Brian Willems
Biographic Data
| ID | 166308 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brian Willems |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brian |
| FAMILY NAME | Willems |
| SIGNATURE | WILLEMS B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Split |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2141-3854 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Zero Point
The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it - questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent atrocities. The 'zero-point' of the title is ground level, rock bottom, the place to which one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin's 1922 piece 'On Asce…
Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist
If we want to be true atheists, do we have to begin with a religious edifice and undermine it from within? Slavoj Žižek has long been a commentator on and critic of Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou's concept of 'the event' alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political su…
Redefinir las causas comunes en las luchas sociales. Un análisis a las antinomias del valor, el trabajo y la subsunción
En el contexto político global contemporáneo, las diversas luchas sociales se están alienando entre sí hasta elpunto de que la ilusión del capitalismo como único sistema socioeconómico posible está difuminando todos los horizontesdel cambio social. En este artículo, trataremos de redefinir las causas comunes de las luchas sociales, demostrando su interseccionalidad e interdependencia. Para ello, nos ocuparemos de una serie de conceptos de la filo…
Interseccionalidades de la izquierda y la derecha en América Latina y Europa. Una exploración de los procesos políticos contemporáneos
El actual auge de nuevos grupos de derecha con una particular combinación de liberalismo económico intransigente y fascismo nacionalista conservador, una especie de liberfascismo, aboga tanto por una estricta apología del mercado capitalista como por la exclusión de aquello que desafíe su modelo en los ámbitos político y cultural. Partiendo del discurso populista que explota el descontento causado por la democracia neoliberal, ganan adeptos y ade…
Global Manifestos for the Twenty-First Century: Rethinking Culture, Common Struggles, and Future Change
Freedom: A Disease Without Cure
We are all afraid that new dangers pose a threat to our hard-won freedoms, so what deserves attention is precisely the notion of freedom." The concept of freedom is deceptively simple - we think we understand it, but the moment we try and define it we encounter contradictions. In this new philosophical exploration, Slavoj Žižek argues that the experience of true, radical freedom is transient and fragile. Countering the idea of libertarian individ…
Surplus-Enjoyment: A Guide for the Non-Perplexed
Parallax: The Dialectics of Mind and World
Parallax, or the change in the position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and more precisely, the assumption that this adjustment is not only due to a change of focus, but a change in that object’s ontological status has been a key philosophical concept throughout history. Building upon Slavoj Žižek’s The Parallax View, this volume shows how parallax is used as a figure of thought that proves how the incompatibility between t…
Bitterness and Recognition: Room for Others in the Novels of Steph Cha
The novels of Steph Cha posit two key characteristics for openness toward others: bitterness and recognition. The thesis of this paper is that both characteristics must be present together in order for openness to occur. Cha’s Juniper Song detective series (2013-15), as well as her stand-alone novel Your House Will Pay (2019), foreground the role that bitterness and recognition play in an openness of Korean-Americans to other American people of c…
Heaven in Disorder
Sex und das verfehlte Absolute
Dialektischer Materialismus für das 21. Jahrhundert Scheinbar Unvereinbares miteinander zu vereinen und einen Materialismus ohne Materie zu schaffen - das unternimmt Slavoj Žižek in einer rigorosen Systematisierung seines philosophischen Denkens. In Auseinandersetzung mit philosophischen Gedankengebäuden von Hegel und Kant bis zu Alain Badiou und Julia Kristeva und unter Einbeziehung von Elementen aus Film- und Popkultur lässt Žižek auf dieser Ba…
Lacans politische Klinik des Seins
The fact that Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis - like the psychoanalytical movement in general - is also a political phenomenon becomes evident by just thinking of the huge community of analysands and analysts in which a specific socio-political dynamic unfolds. But this political dimension is thwarted by thoughts that Lacan found in his confrontation with philosophy. Žižek's essay deals with these overlapping layers in Lacan's thinking. It shows w…
Introduction: Words and Images
Ours is a crowded symbolic universe. During our daily movements through urban infrastructures, we are bombarded with screens full of words and images that are aimed at convincing us to buy something, or vote for someone, or give our attention to a certain message. How do different types of signs affect us in different ways, and how might poetics involve a particular negotiation of this press of the symbolic? In Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics,…
Pandemic: Covid-19 Shakes the World
Sex and the Failed Absolute
"In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Žižek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Žižek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. A…
Null-A Aesthetics: Science-Fiction Separation in Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage and A.E. van Vogt's Null-A Three
Scale and change: Assaf Gavron's CrocAttack!, Nathan Englander's 'Sister Hills' and Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention
The concept of scale is becoming lodged within contemporary theories about reality, change and possibility. This assumption materialises as an increased interest in diverse forms of otherness on the one hand, and an almost fanatic insistence on the non-identity of objects on the other (Franco Moretti, Thomas Piketty, Graham Harman). Scale thus functions both as a medium through which difference can be understood and the absolute limit to which hu…
Speculative realism and science fiction
"One of the reasons that speculative materialism challenges anthropomorphism is that a human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. Therefore, when non-human things are taken to be as equally valid objects of investigation as humans, a more responsible and truthful view of the world takes place. Brian Willems draws on the science fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessi…
Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels
The “formidably brilliant” Žižek considers sexuality, ontology, subjectivity, and Marxian critiques of political economy by way of Lacanian psychoanalysis. If the most interesting theoretical interventions emerge today from the interspaces between fields, then the foremost interspaceman is Slavoj Žižek. In Incontinence of the Void (the title is inspired by a sentence in Samuel Beckett's late masterpiece Ill Seen Ill Said), Žižek explores the empt…
Antigone
Disparities
The concept of disparity has long been a topic of obsession and argument for philosophers but Slavoj éZiézek would argue that what disparity and negativity could mean, might mean and should mean for us and our lives has never been more hotly debated. Disparities explores contemporary 'negative' philosophies from Catherine Malabou's plasticity, Julia Kristeva's abjection and Robert Pippin's self-consciousness to the God of negative theology, new r…
The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, with a new Preface
Todestrieb as an ethical category
What Does a Jew Want: On Binationalism and Other Specters
In the hopes of promoting justice, peace, and solidarity for and with the Palestinian people, this book confronts the core issues of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Its bold question: Will a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians dare to walk together toward a joint Israel–Palestine? Through a collage of meditation, interview, diary, and essay, this text presents a personal, intellectual, and altogether provocative account rich with the in…
The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?
Pandemic: Covid-19 Shakes the World
Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist
If we want to be true atheists, do we have to begin with a religious edifice and undermine it from within? Slavoj Žižek has long been a commentator on and critic of Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou's concept of 'the event' alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political su…
Freedom: A Disease Without Cure
We are all afraid that new dangers pose a threat to our hard-won freedoms, so what deserves attention is precisely the notion of freedom." The concept of freedom is deceptively simple - we think we understand it, but the moment we try and define it we encounter contradictions. In this new philosophical exploration, Slavoj Žižek argues that the experience of true, radical freedom is transient and fragile. Countering the idea of libertarian individ…
Zero Point
The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster, and how we confront despair without collapsing into it - questions never more pertinent than the current moment in the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent atrocities. The 'zero-point' of the title is ground level, rock bottom, the place to which one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin's 1922 piece 'On Asce…
Heaven in Disorder
Scale and change: Assaf Gavron's CrocAttack!, Nathan Englander's 'Sister Hills' and Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention
The concept of scale is becoming lodged within contemporary theories about reality, change and possibility. This assumption materialises as an increased interest in diverse forms of otherness on the one hand, and an almost fanatic insistence on the non-identity of objects on the other (Franco Moretti, Thomas Piketty, Graham Harman). Scale thus functions both as a medium through which difference can be understood and the absolute limit to which hu…
What Does a Jew Want: On Binationalism and Other Specters
In the hopes of promoting justice, peace, and solidarity for and with the Palestinian people, this book confronts the core issues of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Its bold question: Will a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians dare to walk together toward a joint Israel–Palestine? Through a collage of meditation, interview, diary, and essay, this text presents a personal, intellectual, and altogether provocative account rich with the in…
Gaze and Voice as Love Objects: Sic 1
The gaze entices, inspects, fascinates. The voice hypnotizes, seduces, disarms. Are gaze and voice part of the relationship we call love . . . or hate? If so, what part? How do they function? This provocative book examines love as the mediating entity in the essential antagonism between the sexes, and gaze and voice as love's medium. The contributors proceed from the Lacanian premise that there is no sexual relationship, that the sexes are in no …
Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions in the (Mis)use of a Notion
The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology
The Parallax View
In Žižek's long-awaited magnum opus, he theorizes the "parallax gap" in the ontological, the scientific, and the political—and rehabilitates dialectical materialism.The Parallax View is Slavoj Žižek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Žižek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Žižek is interested in the "pa…
Objet a in Social Links
Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth, sic vii
The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?
Welcome to the Desert of the Real!
Todestrieb as an ethical category
What Does a Jew Want: On Binationalism and Other Specters
In the hopes of promoting justice, peace, and solidarity for and with the Palestinian people, this book confronts the core issues of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Its bold question: Will a new generation of Israelis and Palestinians dare to walk together toward a joint Israel–Palestine? Through a collage of meditation, interview, diary, and essay, this text presents a personal, intellectual, and altogether provocative account rich with the in…
The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology, with a new Preface
Antigone
Disparities
The concept of disparity has long been a topic of obsession and argument for philosophers but Slavoj éZiézek would argue that what disparity and negativity could mean, might mean and should mean for us and our lives has never been more hotly debated. Disparities explores contemporary 'negative' philosophies from Catherine Malabou's plasticity, Julia Kristeva's abjection and Robert Pippin's self-consciousness to the God of negative theology, new r…
Speculative realism and science fiction
"One of the reasons that speculative materialism challenges anthropomorphism is that a human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. Therefore, when non-human things are taken to be as equally valid objects of investigation as humans, a more responsible and truthful view of the world takes place. Brian Willems draws on the science fiction of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessi…
Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels
The “formidably brilliant” Žižek considers sexuality, ontology, subjectivity, and Marxian critiques of political economy by way of Lacanian psychoanalysis. If the most interesting theoretical interventions emerge today from the interspaces between fields, then the foremost interspaceman is Slavoj Žižek. In Incontinence of the Void (the title is inspired by a sentence in Samuel Beckett's late masterpiece Ill Seen Ill Said), Žižek explores the empt…
Null-A Aesthetics: Science-Fiction Separation in Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage and A.E. van Vogt's Null-A Three
Scale and change: Assaf Gavron's CrocAttack!, Nathan Englander's 'Sister Hills' and Elia Suleiman's Divine Intervention
The concept of scale is becoming lodged within contemporary theories about reality, change and possibility. This assumption materialises as an increased interest in diverse forms of otherness on the one hand, and an almost fanatic insistence on the non-identity of objects on the other (Franco Moretti, Thomas Piketty, Graham Harman). Scale thus functions both as a medium through which difference can be understood and the absolute limit to which hu…
Sex and the Failed Absolute
"In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Žižek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism. In forging this new materialism, Žižek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. A…
Sex und das verfehlte Absolute
Dialektischer Materialismus für das 21. Jahrhundert Scheinbar Unvereinbares miteinander zu vereinen und einen Materialismus ohne Materie zu schaffen - das unternimmt Slavoj Žižek in einer rigorosen Systematisierung seines philosophischen Denkens. In Auseinandersetzung mit philosophischen Gedankengebäuden von Hegel und Kant bis zu Alain Badiou und Julia Kristeva und unter Einbeziehung von Elementen aus Film- und Popkultur lässt Žižek auf dieser Ba…
Lacans politische Klinik des Seins
The fact that Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis - like the psychoanalytical movement in general - is also a political phenomenon becomes evident by just thinking of the huge community of analysands and analysts in which a specific socio-political dynamic unfolds. But this political dimension is thwarted by thoughts that Lacan found in his confrontation with philosophy. Žižek's essay deals with these overlapping layers in Lacan's thinking. It shows w…
Introduction: Words and Images
Ours is a crowded symbolic universe. During our daily movements through urban infrastructures, we are bombarded with screens full of words and images that are aimed at convincing us to buy something, or vote for someone, or give our attention to a certain message. How do different types of signs affect us in different ways, and how might poetics involve a particular negotiation of this press of the symbolic? In Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics,…
Pandemic: Covid-19 Shakes the World
Parallax: The Dialectics of Mind and World
Parallax, or the change in the position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight and more precisely, the assumption that this adjustment is not only due to a change of focus, but a change in that object’s ontological status has been a key philosophical concept throughout history. Building upon Slavoj Žižek’s The Parallax View, this volume shows how parallax is used as a figure of thought that proves how the incompatibility between t…
Bitterness and Recognition: Room for Others in the Novels of Steph Cha
The novels of Steph Cha posit two key characteristics for openness toward others: bitterness and recognition. The thesis of this paper is that both characteristics must be present together in order for openness to occur. Cha’s Juniper Song detective series (2013-15), as well as her stand-alone novel Your House Will Pay (2019), foreground the role that bitterness and recognition play in an openness of Korean-Americans to other American people of c…
Heaven in Disorder
Philosophy (17 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Politics (6 works)