Indirectness: A Plea for Truth in Times of Post-Truth / Jela Krecic, Jure Simoniti.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Krečič, Jela, editor.

Simoniti, Jure, editor.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (272 p.)

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press, [2026]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The collection is built around the original concept of indirectness, introduced by Jela Krecic to illuminate a neglected dimension of truth. The project brings together some of todays most renowned thinkers and challenges them to rethink truth under 21st-century conditions Challenges 20th-century relativisms (postmodernism, historicism) and 21st-century denigrations of truth (post-truth), aiming to rehabilitate a strong concept of truth as evental, logically reconstructible, historically irreversible, and non-arbitrary in relation to realityDevelops the philosophical concept of indirectness, arguing that truth does not arise through direct alignment with its object, but through mediated displacements that open the space of the RealApplies the concept of indirectness to contemporary phenomena such as political emancipation, new forms of subjectivity, aesthetic experience, film theory, and popular cultureReconstructs the subject as the necessary effect of the logical space of indirectness, defending the integrity of subjectivity against post-humanist tendencies that risk dissolving the Self as the bearer of freedom and interiorityBrings together leading researchers from philosophy, psychoanalysis, political thought, and cultural studies We are said to live in a post-truth era, yet our time is equally marked by an obsession with reality. From new realism in philosophy to the cult of authenticity in culture and the hyper-technological tracking of bodies and minds, countless efforts seek ever more direct access to what is supposedly most real. This volume challenges the crisis-ridden formula of truth striving to grasp reality directlyforever approaching it, yet always falling short. Instead, it rethinks truth through the lens of indirectness and allows it to unfold in the here and now. Drawing on philosophical, political, and aesthetic perspectives, the essays examine how erring is inherent to genuine insight, how fictions reveal facts, how illusions can enable emancipatory struggles, and how strategies of indirectness in literature, cinema, and popular culture produce the effect of truth.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Notes on Contributors

1. Truth and Indirectness / Jela Krecic, Jure Simoniti

Part I: Theories of Indirectness

2. Why True Atheism Has to Be Indirect / Slavoj Z Zizek

3. Desire, Hysteria, and the Indirectness of Truth / Alenka Zupancic

4. Alexandre Kojeve: A Philosopher in the Age of Post-truth / Boris Groys

5. Untruth and Directness / Agon Hamza

Part II: Practices of Indirectness

6. The Shibboleth of Indirectness / Robert Pfaller

7. The Political Void of Contemporary Realism, or of the Coming Anarchy / Catherine Malabou

8. Comrade: A Body for Politics / Jodi Dean

Part III: The Aesthetics of Indirectness

9. Being and Punning / Mladen Dolar

10. Adornos Exotic Girls of Language, or, The Verfremdworteffekt / Frank Ruda

11. Crever desprit: On Matter Directly Incarnating Ideas in Sci-fi Literature / Miran Bozovic

12. Tarantinos Cinema: Fiction against Ideology / Jela Krecic

13. Image and Narrative: Indirectness and the Difference between American and European Cinema / Jure Simoniti

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed March 30 2026)

ISBN:

1-3995-5792-0