Astra Taylor is a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker, writer, and musician, best known for her 2005 film, Zizek!, about the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and for her 2008 film, Examined Life.
Slavoj Žižek had added a further twist to the debate for the 21st century, arguing that in a postmodern age dominated by what he calls "the superego injunction to enjoy that permeates our discourse", the quest for pleasure has become more of a duty than a pleasure: for Žižek, "psychoanalysis is the only discipline in which you are allowed not to enjoy" !
In 2005, Konner produced the film Zizek!, a documentary which follows the internationally renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek on a worldwide speaking tour.
However, Žižek also contrasts Kieślowski's position with the tendency of modern media to produce a discourse in which everything is openly and obscenely declared, such as confessions by public figures like the former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
The first chapter begins with an analysis of "How did Marx Invent the Symptom?" Žižek compares the notion of symptom that works in both Marx as well as Freud in this section.
Contributors: Alberto Moreiras, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Walter D. Mignolo, Slavoj Zizek, Rey Chow, Ralph A. Litzinger.
Loren Glass argues from a historical materialist and autonomist perspective that Zizek's critique is stronger than other critical theoretical responses (such as those of Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio) because it is "cautiously optimistic" about the possibility for ethical action, whereas other critics have remained pessimistic.