In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Zizek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Zizek's reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity's relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change. In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Zizek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel's positions that differ in important respects from Zizek's version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Zizek's deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Zizek.

This book offers readers a uniquely detailed engagement with the ideas of legendary French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The Freudian Thing is one of Lacan's most important texts, wherein he explains the significance and stakes of his "return to Freud" as a passionate defence of Freud's disturbing, epoch-making discovery of the unconscious, against misrepresentations and criticisms of it. However, Lacan is characteristically cryptic in The Freudian Thing. The combination of his writing style and vast range of references renders much of his thinking inaccessible to all but a narrow circle of scholarly specialists. Johnston's Irrepressible Truth opens up the universe of Lacanian psychoanalysis to much wider audiences by furnishing a sentence-by-sentence interpretive unpacking of this pivotal 1955 essay. In so doing, Johnston reveals the precision, rigor, and soundness of Lacan's teachings.

Rethinks objectivity and fiction in contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis and Marxism beyond the realism nominalism divide Rethinks the concept of objectivity through its relation to fiction beyond their mere opposition Conceptualises 'objective fictions' Highlights a shared background underpinning realist and nominalist approaches to the relation between subjectivity and objectivity Revitalises modern/contemporary philosophical currents, psychoanalytic theory and the Marxist critique of political economy beyond the realism-nominalism divide Includes contributions from a mix of renowned thinkers and from the new generation, including Slavoj i ek, Mladen Dolar, Frank Ruda and Samo Tom i? Relying on contemporary continental philosophy, psychoanalytic theory and the Marxist tradition, this volume moves beyond the deadlock between nominalism and realism. It rethinks the relationship between objectivity and fiction through engaging with a series of 'objective fictions', including fetishes, semblances, lies, rumours, sophistry, fantasies, and conspiracy theories, among other phenomena. What all these phenomena exhibit are paradoxical entanglements of subjectivity with objectivity and of fiction with truth. When it comes to questions of objectivity in current philosophical debates and public discourse, we are witnessing the re-emergence and growing importance of two classical, opposed approaches: nominalism and (metaphysical) realism. Today's nominalist stances, by absolutizing intersubjectivity, are moving towards the abandonment of the very notion of truth and objective reality. By contrast, today's realist positions, including those bound up with scientific discourse, insist on the category of the object-in-itself as irreducible to any kind of subjective mediation. However, despite their seeming mutual exclusivity, both approaches share fundamental presuppositions, namely, those of neat separations between the spheres of subjectivity and objectivity as well as between the realms of fiction and truth.

Christopher Lloyd stars in this supernatural thriller based on Dan Wells' novel. The film follows sociopathic, bullied teenager John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) as he investigates the seemingly paranormal serial killer terrorising his rural Midwestern town. After being told by his therapist that he has the psychological profile of a serial killer, John grapples with his own homicidal tendencies, that he's developed systems to curb, as he tries to use his own insights to track down the elusive killer. As he does so, he begins to suspect that his elderly neighbour Crowley (Lloyd) isn't as innocent as he seems.

The first volume of "The Idea of Communism" followed the 2009 London conference called in response to Alain Badiou's 'communist hypothesis', where an all-star cast of radical intellectuals put the idea of communism back on the map.
This volume brings together papers from the subsequent 2011 New York conference organized by Verso and continues this critical discussion, highlighting the philosophical and political importance of the communist idea, in a world of financial and social turmoil.
Contributors include Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Susan Buck-Morss, Jodi Dean, Adrian Johnston, Francois Nicolas, Frank Ruda, Emmanuel Terray and Slavoj Žižek.

When it comes to the question of objectivity in current philosophical debates, there is a growing prominence of two opposite approaches: nominalism and realism. By absolutising intersubjectivity, the nominalist approach is moving towards the abandonment of the very notion of truth and objective reality. For its part, the realist approach insists on the category of the object-in-itself as irreducible to any kind of subjective mediation. Despite their seeming mutual exclusiveness, both approaches share a fundamental presupposition, namely, that of a neat separation between the spheres of subjectivity and objectivity as well as between fiction and truth. This collection offers a rethinking of the relationship between objectivity and fiction through engaging with a series of 'objective fictions', including such topics as fetishes, semblances, lies, rumours, sophistry, fantasies and conspiracy theories. It does so through engagement with modern and contemporary philosophical traditions and psychoanalytic theory, with all of these orientations being irreducible to either nominalist or realist approaches.

Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines -- European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience -- Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions.Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science.

In 2012, philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizek published what arguably is his magnum opus, the one-thousand-page tome Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. A sizable sequel appeared in 2014, Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism. In these two books, Zizek returns to the German idealist G. W. F. Hegel in order to forge a new materialism for the twenty-first century. Zizek's reinvention of Hegelian dialectics explores perennial and contemporary concerns: humanity's relations with nature, the place of human freedom, the limits of rationality, the roles of spirituality and religion, and the prospects for radical sociopolitical change. In A New German Idealism, Adrian Johnston offers a first-of-its-kind sustained critical response to Less Than Nothing and Absolute Recoil. Johnston, a leading authority on and interlocutor of Zizek, assesses the recent return to Hegel against the backdrop of Kantian and post-Kantian German idealism. He also presents alternate reconstructions of Hegel's positions that differ in important respects from Zizek's version of dialectical materialism. In particular, Johnston criticizes Zizek's deviations from the secular naturalism and Enlightenment optimism of his chosen sources of inspiration: not only Hegel, but Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud too. In response, Johnston develops what he calls transcendental materialism, an antireductive and leftist materialism capable of preserving and advancing the core legacies of the Hegelian, Marxian, and Freudian traditions central to Zizek.

Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou defy theoretical humanities' deeply-entrenched resistance to engagements with the life sciences. Rather than treat biology and its branches as hopelessly reductive and politically suspect, they view recent advances in neurobiology and its adjacent scientific fields as providing crucial catalysts to a radical rethinking of subjectivity. Merging three distinct disciplines -- European philosophy from Descartes to the present, Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis, and affective neuroscience -- Johnston and Malabou triangulate the emotional life of affective subjects as conceptualized in philosophy and psychoanalysis with neuroscience. Their experiments yield different outcomes. Johnston finds psychoanalysis and neurobiology have the potential to enrich each other, though affective neuroscience demands a reconsideration of whether affects can be unconscious. Investigating this vexed issue has profound implications for theoretical and practical analysis, as well as philosophical understandings of the emotions.Malabou believes scientific explorations of the brain seriously problematize established notions of affective subjectivity in Continental philosophy and Freudian-Lacanian analysis. She confronts philosophy and psychoanalysis with something neither field has seriously considered: the concept of wonder and the cold, disturbing visage of those who have been affected by disease or injury, such that they are no longer affected emotionally. At stake in this exchange are some of philosophy's most important claims concerning the relationship between the subjective mind and the objective body, the structures and dynamics of the unconscious dimensions of mental life, the role emotion plays in making us human, and the functional differences between philosophy and science.

The complete three-part BBC drama set amidst the lesbian subculture of 1890s England. The series follows heroine Nan Astley (Rachael Stirling), who meets and falls for male impersonator Kitty Butler (Keeley Hawes). Nan moves to London and begins an affair with Kitty while also joining her music hall act. When she discovers an unwelcome truth Nan begins a voyage into the capital's sexual underworld which eventually sees her become destitute and forced to make some important decisions about the future of her relationships.

Uplifting made-for-TV drama starring Toby Jones.The extraordinary true story of Neil Baldwin (Jones) is told as he overcomes early obstacles in life to embark on a journey that leads him to many fascinating encounters. The many achievements in his varied life are shown as he goes from woking as a clown in the circus to being awarded an honorary degree at Keele University and managing their unofficial football team named after him. His experience in football even leads him to becoming the kitman and mascot for his beloved Stoke City F.C. where he is adored by fans and staff. After a late career change to pursue his interest in religion, Neil becomes a preacher which leads him to the House of Commons and tea with MP Tony Benn and a chance meeting with royalty. Gemma Jones also stars as Neil's mother Mary.

Family comedy based on Eric Knight's 1938 novel. The film is set on the eve of World War II in a Yorkshire mining town in northern England. The Carraclough family fall on hard times and have to sell Lassie to the Duke of Rudling (Peter O'Toole). Transported to the Duke's remote castle in the north of Scotland, Lassie is determined to escape from the clutches of the Duke and his evil trainer, in an effort to make her way home for Christmas and return to the family she loves.

Adrian Johnston's trilogy Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism aims to forge a thoroughly materialist yet antireductive theory of subjectivity. In this second volume, A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston focuses on the philosophy of nature required for such a theory. This volume is guided by a fundamental question: How must nature be rethought so that human minds and freedom do not appear to be either impossible or inexplicable within it? Asked differently: How must the natural world itself be structured such that sapient subjects in all their distinctive peculiarities emerged from and continue to exist within this world? In A Weak Nature Alone, Johnston develops his transcendental materialist account of nature through engaging with and weaving together five main sources of inspiration: Hegelian philosophy, Marxist materialism, Freudian-Lacanian metapsychology, Anglo-American analytic neo-Hegelianism, and evolutionary theory and neurobiology. Johnston argues that these seemingly (but not really) strange bedfellows should be brought together so as to construct a contemporary ontology of nature. Through this ontology, nonnatural human subjects can be seen to arise in an immanent, bottom-up fashion from nature itself.

Christopher Lloyd stars in this supernatural thriller based on Dan Wells' novel. The film follows sociopathic, bullied teenager John Wayne Cleaver (Max Records) as he investigates the seemingly paranormal serial killer terrorising his rural Midwestern town. After being told by his therapist that he has the psychological profile of a serial killer, John grapples with his own homicidal tendencies, that he's developed systems to curb, as he tries to use his own insights to track down the elusive killer. As he does so, he begins to suspect that his elderly neighbour Crowley (Lloyd) isn't as innocent as he seems.

The giant of Ljubljana marshals some of the greatest thinkers of our age in support of a dazzling re-evaluation of Jacques Lacan.
It is well known that Jacques Lacan developed his ideas in dialogue with major European thought and art, past and present. Yet what if there is another frame of reference, rarely or never mentioned by Lacan, which influenced his thinking, and is crucial to its proper understanding? Zizek focuses on Lacan's "silent partners," those who provide a key to Lacanian theory, discussing his work in relation to the Pre-Socratics, Diderot, Hegel, Nietzsche, Holderlin, Wagner, Turgenev, Kafka, Henry James, Artaud and Kiarostami.
As Zizek says, "The ultimate aim of the present volume is to instigate a new wave of Lacanian paranoia: to push readers to engage in the work of their own and start to discern Lacanian motifs everywhere, from politics to trash culture, from obscure ancient philosophers to contemporary Iranian filmmakers."
Contributors include Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Joan Copjec, Mladen Dolar, Fredric Jameson, Silvia Ons, and Alenka Zupancic.

Detailed by a huge US corporation to develop a country house on the outskirts of London into a 21st century business school, Christopher Anderson (Liam Cunningham) finds himself stumped when it transpires that the building he has been assigned contains a rare collection of photographs. Anderson's attempts to bulldoze through red tape are frustrated by the on-site staff, who are determined to preserve their unique representation of Britain's heritage.

This book deals with a new materialist theory of subjectivity mobilising philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics and science. Armed with resources provided by German idealism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, the life sciences and contemporary philosophy, Johnston formulates an account of subjectivity that is both materialist and naturalist, and does full justice to human beings as irreducible to natural matter alone. At the same time, he argues against relapses into idealisms, dualisms and spiritualisms. It critically engages with some of today's most important thinkers, including Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Catherine Malabou, Jean-Claude Milner, Martin Hagglund, William Connolly and Jane Bennett. It is split into three parts: Zizek: Dossier of an Ongoing Debate; Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious between Philosophy, Science and Religion; and, Politics: True and False Utopias. It combines Continental-style philosophy with science.

BBC drama based on real events in World War Two. In September 1942, a German U-boat sinks the British ocean liner RMS Laconia 600 miles off the African coast. When the U-Boat's commander Werner Hartenstein (Ken Duken) realises that the ship has POWs and civilians on board, he makes a decision that goes against the orders of Nazi high command and instructs his men to save as many of the shipwrecked survivors as they can. Brian Cox and Lindsey Duncan co-star.

Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l'Analyse (1966-69), the most ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure specific configurations of discourse, from the psychological and ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary transformation. Volume One of Concept and Form translates some of the most important theoretical texts from the Cahiers pour l'Analyse; this second volume collects newly commissioned essays on the journal, together with recent interviews with people who were either members of its editorial board or associated with its broader theoretical project. It aims to help reconstruct the intellectual context of the Cahiers, and to assess its contemporary theoretical legacy. Prefaced by an overview of the project's rigorous investment in science and conceptual analysis, the volume considers in particular the Cahiers' distinctive effort to link the apparently incommensurable categories of 'structure' and 'subject', so as to prepare for a new synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis. Contributors include Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Edward Baring, Jacques Bouveresse, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Peter Hallward, Adrian Johnston, Patrice Maniglier, Tracy McNulty, Jean-Claude Milner, Knox Peden, Jacques Ranciere, Francois Regnault, and Slavoj Zizek.