There is little doubt that Slavoj Žižek’s place in the universe of celebrity philosophers is secured. His prolific writing activity reflects his frantic and flamboyant speaking style; this is the last of 40 books that he has written or edited since his magnum opus The Sublime Object of Ideology in 1989.End Times does not surprise its reader. Žižek employs his signature cocktail of provocation, cultural criticism and psychoanalytic theory to unveil the symbolic texture of our current political predicament: is the Left able to articulate our discontent with capitalism into a truly alternative vision? Here Žižek makes his usual long rounds around the question, and often returns to a point that has been consistently iterated by the Marxist thinker Alain Badiou: it is through stepping out of the politically correct discourse of liberalism and through "openness to the unexpected" that we become aware of the prevailing cynicism of our modern, post-political ‘end times’.

The seeds of Hegelian and Lacanian thought are omnipresent in the book, and they are poignantly intertwined with analyses of literary texts, from Brecht to Sophocles, the films of Brian de Palma and Bernardo Bertolucci, and the music of Wagner and Eric Satie. This time, Žižek attempts to dress his exuberant and unorthodox writing with a hint of structure. He develops his argument in five stages that follow the psychological model of grief proposed by Kubler-Ross (a controversial populist thanatologist). Societies, he argues, are going progressively through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance of capitalism’s fundamental disorders and its looming "apocalyptic zero point". Each of the stages provides the backdrop for some eloquent deconstructions of common ‘liberal truths’, showing for instance how today’s patronising tolerance of Islam is a form of "reflexive" racism at its purest.

No doubt these are grim times for radical thinkers and activists alike, and Žižek’s works have offered a thorough and refreshing critique of liberal politics and its wholesale endorsement of the death of ideology. Yet Living in the End Times seems to ultimately avoid engaging with the question it begs: how can, to use Žižek’s own words, today’s "resigned and silent majority" of citizens realize its emancipatory potential? How can our ‘end times’ come to an end?

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