I think I liked some of the chapters in this book, or at least found the arguments entertaining to ponder, but it would take a lot longer to really unpack and understand each chapter before I could really say whether I agree with Zizek's conclusions, assumptions and reasoning. I enjoy that his philosophy is very much a glass bead game of popular books and films, mainstream religions and more obscure sources, tying together philosphy, music, literature, and science with lots of extra ornamentation to create a very modern-sounding philosophy. I found his essays in this book a bit more like practice puzzles, rather than practical philosophy, addressing sexuality, gender, and religious questions that are inherently masculine, and elitist, 'Western' masculine. Thus, while I can find the 'games' in his essays interesting and fun, they feel very artificial.

Granted, mainstream philosphy is Western and male in our current society, still, so of course it is not surprising that Zizek's book is addressing questions of sexuality that address 'female hysteria', and that generally approach sex from the heterosexual male perspective. At least there are nods toward an awareness in this book that the 'female' perspectives may differ a bit, but at least in this book, Zizek's philosophy is not one that I can easily internalize as personally resonant as a female reader, however much I might like some of Zizek's points. He did at least spend a whole paragraph or so discussing Ayn Rand's novel We The Living, which I appreciated. Maybe after I've found time to unpack these essays, watching, listening to, and reading all the sources he references and studying the philosophers he particularly addresses, I'll find his philosophy a bit less distancing. ( )