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The task of writing an introduction to the work of Slavoj Žižek brings with it a unique set of challenges. One such challenge lies in the fact that Žižek is a thinker less concerned with devising an original set of concepts than toying with an elusive Hegelian-Marxist-Lacanian assemblage of ideas. As such, it is often less an introduction to Žižek that we need than an introduction to the formidable edifice of ideas that forms the foundation of his various critical speculations. That said, there has been no shortage of ostensibly “critical” introductions to Žižek. At least two have preceded Parker's treatment; these titles provide the immediate benchmarks against which his text should be assessed.
Kay's (2003) Žižek: A Critical Introduction succeeds admirably in connecting Žižek's cultural and political criticism to the vocabulary of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and manages to do so without surrendering the complexity of the material. Her consideration of Žižek's politics is, unfortunately, toothless by comparison. Slavoj Žižek by Tony Myers (2003) provides the quick-fix: a succession of rapid illuminations that helps one grasp Žižek in a series of “eureka” moments which, alas, dissipate all too quickly in the lack of a more sustained engagement.
The first obvious difference between Parker's text and these two earlier books is that Parker provides a thorough historical contextualization - in the form of a discussion of the rise and decomposition of the Yugoslav state - of the conditions of (im)possibility from which Žižek's thought emerges. (In speaking of “conditions of impossibility” Parker intends to draw our attention to the fact that concepts are sometimes utilized precisely so as to render points of apparent historical impossibility comprehensible.) The problem with this attempt at contextualization is twofold. The compression of analysis required to put Žižek's political thought in dialogue with the formation of Slovenia is, firstly, difficult to adequately accommod