Indirectness - by Jela Kreč & ič & & Jure Simoniti Hardcover

About the Book

The collection is built around the original concept of indirectness, introduced by Jela Krečič to illuminate a neglected dimension of truth. The project brings together some of today's most renowned thinkers and challenges them to rethink truth under 21st-century conditions.

Book Synopsis

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 directly--forever 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.

Review Quotes

Is philosophy the true enemy or the perfect accomplice of contemporary hegemonic ideology? Through the concept of indirectness, this collection edited by Krecic and Simoniti attempts to separate critical from complicit philosophy. Indirectness - introduced as a new concept in this volume by Jela Krecic - can be seen as the shibboleth of our time (as Pfaller puts it in his contribution). If we can recover the ability to be indirect - to take a detour through the other - we can save ourselves from the psychosis of a capitalist world that seeks to turn us into pure individuals and isolated identities.

The topic of directness is approached by the greatest living philosophers in this volume. From Mladen Dolar's careful analysis of the indirectness present in wordplay, punning and humour that reminds the subject of the social nature of subjectivity to Catherine Malabou's proposal for a new political subject of indirectness to Alenka Zupancic's provocation that truth is indirect, the contributions to this volume use indirectness to blow open everything you thought you knew about philosophy, psychoanalysis and reality.

--Alfie Bown, King's College London

The unruly unity in the authors' different interpretations of the concept of indirectness represents a magnificent answer to the widespread demand to "simply say it as it is". They all digress and make use of art, politics, psychoanalysis, everyday psychopathology, and puns - and thereby collectively create a surprising and inspiring truth-event.--Henrik Jøker Bjerre, Aalborg University, Denmark

In these desperate times, perhaps the greatest threat comes to our belief in the idea of truth. In Indirectness, Jela Krečič and Jure Simoniti come to the rescue. They have assembled a collection of essays that show exactly how the commitment to truth can be rediscovered and even strengthened--not by clinging to the old conceptions but by recognizing the centrality in indirection for arriving at truth. It's a game-changing work not to be missed if we are to escape the horrors of the post-truth world.--Todd McGowan, The University of Vermont