Event Philosophy in Transit

Probably the most famous living philosopher, Slavoj Zizek explores the concept of 'event', in the second in this new series of easily digestible philosophy

Agatha Christie's 4.50 from Paddington opens on a train from Scotland to London where Elspeth McGillicudy, on a way to visit her old friend Jane Marple, sees a woman strangled in a compartment of a passing train (the 4.50 from Paddington). It all happens very fast and in a blurred vision, so the police don't take Elspeth's report seriously as there is no evidence of wrongdoing; only Miss Marple believes her story and starts to investigate... This is an event at its purest and minimal: something shocking that happens all of a sudden and interrupts the usual flow of things; something that appears out of nowhere, without discernible causes, and whose ontological status is unclear - an appearance without solid being as its foundation. In Christie's novel, the role of Miss Marple is precisely to de-eventalize the event, to explain it away as an occurrence which fits the coordinates of our normal reality.

A subject for which there is not yet an agreed-upon definition within philosophy, Slavoj Zizek explores the terrain of this contestable term in a series of short chapters that examine everything from the event as political revolution and the rise of a new art form to the event as religious belief and falling in love. Event is a mind-blowing, thrilling, accessible book from arguably our greatest living cultural theorist and philosopher.

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. The author of many books, he has made contributions to political theory, film theory and theoretical psychoanalysis.