At the outset of the twentieth century, Lenin argued that materialism has to change its form with each new scientific discovery. Today, argues Slavoj Zizek in this major new work, we should apply this stricture to Lenin himself. Philosophical materialism has not yet risen to the challenge of relativity theory and quantum physics, or breakthroughs like Freudian psychoanalysis-and we need hardly mention the failure of actually existing Communism.

In Absolute Recoil, Zizek proposes a new foundation for dialectical materialism that answers these fundamental challenges.