Žižek’s Dialectical Materialism – The Corollaries of Immanent Transcendence

In his most recent work, especially Less Than Nothing (2012), Slavoj Žižek has continued to refine his project of reviving a Hegelian metaphysics of dialectical materialism that meets the challenge established by German Idealism of thinking ‘subject with substance'. This metaphysics involves linking the concept of the subject as developed by German Idealism with the concept of the Freudian death drive to conceptualise the subject as that point of negativity that immanently transcends the symbolic and natural coordinates of its existence, rendering the world non-all. Žižek has been heavily criticised for the way his ‘gappy’ ontology lacks a normative dimension that could ground his obvious commitments to left-wing political projects. I will argue that Žižek has developed unique conceptions of freedom, ethics, truth and the divine based on his ontology, and so provide tentative responses to important criticisms of Žižek’s work.