The essays in Zero Point ask how we distinguish defeat from disaster and how we confront
despair without collapsing into it - questions never more pertinent than the current moment in
the wake of electoral victories for authoritarian populists and unceasing news of violent
atrocities. The 'zero-point' of the title is ground level rock bottom the place to which
one retreats and where one regroups. Taken from Vladimir Lenin's 1922 piece 'On Ascending a
High Mountain in which Lenin considers the complexities of how one 'retreats' while keeping
faith in the cause the central simile of the climber offers a blueprint for resilience
flexibility and the persistence of hope. This is the revolutionary as living out the
Beckettian motto: 'Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' In Zizek's hands this becomes the
formula for confronting the antagonisms of existing world order. With a particular focus on the
Middle East -the point at which all our tensions threaten to explode - Zizek argues nothing can
be addressed meaningfully without such a confrontation. The consequences of eschewing
apolitical acts of solidarity and choosing to attempt to speak truth to power are reckoned with
in the second half of Zero Point. In a unique piece assembled chronologically from unpublished
writings Zizek wrestles with the fallout from his controversial speech at the Frankfurt Book
Fair in October 2023 - a speech which saw him interrupted condemned and accused of
anti-Semitism. The reader bears witness as Zizek processes the criticism evolves his thinking
and explores the full ethical political and personal ramifications of the question: When is
the right time to speak?
