Introducing The Parallax View
The Slovenian School Reading Group starts February 16th
The Slovenian School Reading Group is a monthly reading group. Throughout 2026 the reading group will be focused on Slavoj Žižek’s The Parallax View. This work covers a wide range of topics, including philosophy, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, politics, literature, and film, and is divided into three main sections: philosophical, scientific, and political. The book has often been described as his magnum opus, as he attempts to outline his system of thought.
The goal of the Slovenian School Reading Group is to help us to think the politics of subjectivity and come to a refined understanding of the dialectical and unconscious dimensions of the subject’s life.
To get access to both the live sessions and recordings, sign up as a member to The Portal, or become a paid subscriber to Dimitri Crooijman’s Substack or Patreon:
Introduction: Dialectical Materialism at the Gates
1: Short-circuit between philosophy and politics.
Žižek opens The Parallax View with the idea that “high culture” (fine art and theory) and “base brutal politics” (actual political activity) operate as an “impossible short circuit” for “structural reasons”.1 His main example focuses a tension between Walter Benjamin’s theses critiquing the failure of Marxist politics and Stalinist agents murdering Benjamin for threatening the legitimacy of the regime.2 He refers to this structural short circuit as a result of “mutually untranslatable” orientations, aims, or perspectives that can find no higher “synthesis” or “mediation”.3 In other words, he thinks of the parallax between philosophy and politics itself as a “non-relation”. On a wider scale, this non-relation as a symptom of modern subjectivity and the modern world can be traced back to the “historical moment” of German Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) and the French Revolution overthrowing traditional monarchy. He states:4
German Idealism could only emerge in the backward conditions of a Germany with no political revolution
In other words, if modern subjectivity and the modern world can be understood as emerging fully from the political revolution in France and the philosophical revolution in Germany, the proof of the parallax between politics and philosophy, can be found in the fact that these revolutions had to occur separately (i.e. France could not both revolutionise politics and philosophy, and vice versa).
This brings us to the definition Žižek proposes for the key idea in The Parallax View, that of “the parallax gap”:5
a confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible
For the context of philosophy and politics, we should not think that a “higher synthesis” is possible “between the two”: revolutionary politics and philosophy merged into one great “philosopher king”, for example. We should rather think of politics and philosophy as operating as a “parallax gap” itself. For Žižek, and the wager of The Parallax View:6
the parallax gap provides the key which enables us to discern the subversive core of Hegelian dialectics/dialectical materialism
This wager is situated in the meta-tension between Hegelian dialectics and Marxist politics, in the sense that, while both are connected, and both need each other, they are at the same time fields in which “no neutral common ground is possible” (revolutionary high culture and actual political activity). Žižek claims it is our inability to maintain the parallax between the two, that has led to the decline of both:7
“the crisis of Marxism is not due only to sociopolitical defeats of Marxist movements, the crisis can also be indexed through the decline of dialectical materialism as the philosophical underpinning of Marxism”
Consequently, it is not that you could just sit Stalin and Benjamin in a room or podcast for a conversation/dialogue and they could reconcile Benjamin’s critique with Stalin’s political regime; or you could sit Hegel and Marx in a room or podcast for a conversation/dialogue and they could reconcile dialectical method with communist strategy. For Žižek, the parallax gap confronts us with a real in which “there is no space for compromise”, no space for reconciliatory “dialogue”.8 In other words, in order to hold a parallax, one has to operate in the real of the gap itself, holding the higher order tension that presents to us no symbolic mediation.
2: The central importance of dialectical materialism.
Žižek’s work is held together by the notion of “dialectical materialism”, and he juxtaposes this notion against both “negative dialectics”, which he claims falls in love with “explosions of negativity” but cannot “overcome its own parasitising of the preceding positive order”,9 and “materialist dialectic”, which he claims can only result in “determinate reflection” as opposed to “reflective determination”.10 For Žižek, negative dialectics cannot really conceive of the negation of the negation (and thus operate constructively or positively with the real of contradiction), and connected to this, materialist dialectic cannot really forward an active engagement with determination (but can only passively reify substance via external cognition). The first problem manifests most obviously in postmodern critical theory (operating as a parasite in the gaps/cracks of neoliberal political-economy and materialist science), and the second problem manifests most obviously in materialist science or scientific reductionism (disconnecting and separating itself from any real political context).
Žižek, in forwarding the idea of the parallax gap, is attempting to maintain the real of the split between absolute negativity (ontological) and positive contradiction (epistemological), which nevertheless mutually interrelate as a parallax gap (i.e. onto-epistemology).11 He refers to this real as the “speculative identity” of the “highest and the lowest” (e.g. high philosophy and base politics); the highest knowledge as a positive contradiction, and the lowest reality as an absolute negativity in which “the particular” embodies “the universal” itself (as opposed to passively reflecting or unconsciously pretending to embody some “perfect ideal reality”).12 The tendency of those operating in “negative dialectics” is to unconsciously perform as if they hold the perfect reality while relentless critiquing everything in existence; and the tendency of those operating in the “materialist dialectic” is to reify their own “determinate reflection” as the perfect reality itself.
In contrast, for Žižek, dialectical materialism introduces the “death drive” as the insistence on “endlessly repeating the state of tension” (between the highest and the lowest) as the real.13 For Žižek, this overcomes any simplistic notion of Marxist humanism, and its connections to “collective praxis of humanity”, for the “inhuman core of the human”, which operates in the (parallax) gap between humanity (our universal rights and responsibilities) and its own inhuman excess (the singular monstrosities that emerges from real engagement with particularity).14 The ultimate challenge here can be found in the way we must hold together the universal social substance governed by reified external cognition and the singularity of our individual excessive drives that disrupt universal social substance.15 Žižek explains:16
“The gap between the individual and the “impersonal” social dimension is to be inscribed back within the individual himself.”
This parallax fundamentally challenges notions of both traditional community (which cannot deal with the singularity of our individual excessive drives) and the modern individual (which struggles to relate to external cognition of our universal social substance). Žižek frames the problem as follows:17
how should the external-impersonal socio-symbolic order of institutionalised practices and beliefs be structured, if the subject is to retain his “sanity”, his “normal” functioning?
As is consistent with Žižek’s entire philosophical drive, he finds inspiration for the parallax between modern philosophy and politics in the theology of Christianity, where “Christ himself” functions as “the difference between God and man” (the universal and the particular) “transposed into man himself” (the excessive particularity of the death drive).18
He concludes his argument for the necessary of dialectical materialism with the emphasis that the entire field of dialectical materialism itself has been “colonised” and “obfuscated” by the “New Age notion of polarity of opposites (yin/yang)”.19 In other words, we cannot understand the parallax of being-nothing as a balanced opposition, but rather think about the parallax of being-nothing as the “inherent tension, gap, non-coincidence, of the One itself”.20
3: Positive substantial identity as impossible
The idea of the One as inherently riddled with “tension, gap” and “non-coincidence” with itself culminates in the idea of our identities as “self-repelling”, which means that finding “positive substantial identity” is “impossible”. Rather, to be “dialectical materialists” we “identify” with our “self-repelling” nature as such. For Žižek, the truth of this nature of identity is reflected throughout reality:21
Quantum physics as wave-particle duality22
Neurobiology as skull/brain-spirit/subject23
Ontology as horizon-roots
Real as insubstantial inconsistency-multiplicity of perspectives
Psychoanalytic subjectivity as desire (unconscious formations)-drives24
Vagina as ultimate object of penetration/mystery of sex-organ of maternity
Žižek sees in all of these dimensions “the parallax gap”: waves and particles, skull/brain and spirit/subject, ontological horizon and roots, insubstantial real and perspective multiplicity, subjective desire and inhuman drive, sexual penetration and maternity, are all “mutually untranslatable” with “no neutral common ground”, and yet fundamentally interconnected, embodiments of the nature of identity as a “self-repelling one”.25
This is reflected into the parallax of philosophy itself by way of philosophy itself “caught” in the position of operating at the “interstices” of “substantial social communities”.26 Philosophy, from its very beginnings, is involved in taking up an “impossible position”, fundamentally “displaced with regard to any communal identity”.27 Practically speaking this has consequences for the aforementioned parallax between philosophy and politics: whereas, in politics, ethnic roots, national identity are identified with as categories of truth, for philosophy, the taking up of such categories as truth is “immature”, and not yet in the domain of “free human beings who dwell in the dimension of the universality of reason”.28 At the same time, Žižek maintains that, in order to maintain the parallax gap (between philosophy and politics), we should not be “ashamed” of our ethnic roots or national identities, we can “be proud of them”, but in the end, they are “ultimately irrelevant”.29 X
Here Žižek locates the core of philosophy in Kant’s transcendental turn, where “homelessness remains irreducible” vis-a-vis ethnic roots and national identities, but also opens up the condition of possibility for “world-civil-society”; and where Hegel realises Kant’s project by way of associating “homelessness” with “home”. What is our “philosophical home”: the very open movement of negativity.30 Žižek states:31
“Kantian cosmopolitan world-civil-society is not simply an expansion of the citizenship of a nation state to the citizenship of a global transnational State, it involves a shift from the principle of identification with one’s “organic” ethnic substance actualised in particular traditions, to a radically different principle of identification.”
This “different principle of identification”, critically connected to the “philosophical home” as “the very open movement of negativity”, is nothing but the:32
“singular subject who in a kind of short circuit, bypasses the mediation of the particular, and directly participates in the Universal.”
This Universal, for Žižek, is not the “identification with an all encompassing global Substance” (“humanity”), but “with a universal ethico-political principle”.33 This universal ethico-political principle could be related to religion, science, or politics, but its distinction from both organic ethnic substance and national identity is that it is “in principle accessible to everyone”.34 Here the key principle:35
“One is truly universal only as radically singular, in the interstices of communal identities.”
4: Parallax in Three Parts
Žižek concludes the introduction with a system of philosophy, science, and politics that reflect the three different aspects of Hegel’s universality, particularity, and singularity:36
Philosophy as universal ontological difference
Science as particular phenomenal self-relating and biophysical reality
Politics as singular antagonisms proper to socioeconomic reality
The outline of these three registers can be understood as a revisioning of Hegel’s “Absolute Idea” in the sense that Hegel conceived the triad of Philosophy-Art-Religion. For Žižek, this Absolute Idea gains itself a historical dimension, with modern subjectivity and the modern world struggling at the interstices of new coordinates. These coordinates challenge the philosopher to face real otherness as opposed to simple identification with a self-similar ontology; challenge the scientist to reflect the gap between self and biophysical reality; and challenge our politics to the real of immanent antagonism as it relates to society and economics.
Throughout 2026 the Slovenian School Reading Group will think through these critical ideas:
Short-circuit between philosophy and politics
The central importance of dialectical materialism
Positive substantial identity as impossible
Parallax in Three Parts (Philosophy, Science, Politics)
To get involved, see:
Žižek, S. 2006. The Parallax View. MIT Press. p. 3-4.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 4.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 5.
Ibid.
The unity between absolute negativity as ontological and positive contradiction as epistemological is, I claim, the two possible readings of Hegel’s Science of Logic, in which both are equally true: the positive contradiction of our knowledge is the correct approach to “being”, and the absolute negativity of ontology is the correct approach to “nothing”, and when combined, open “true becoming”.
Žižek, S. 2006. The Parallax View. MIT Press. p. 5.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 6.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 7.
Ibid.
Ibid.
In Hegel, the unity of atoms/void
In Hegel, the “spirit is a bone”
“trying to grab object of desire vs. enjoying the repeated failure”
Žižek, S. 2006. The Parallax View. MIT Press. p. 7.
Ibid. p. 8.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 8-9.
Ibid. p. 9.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. p. 10.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.