Slavoj Žižek takes on the Hegelian notion of “verkehrte Welt” (the world turned upside down) and considers it the perfect concept for our current predicament. An example of this kind of topsy-turvydom is when you have precise, carefully laid plans and it implodes at the last minute leaving everyone running around in chaos. It encapsulates the basic reversal in a Hegelian dialectical process in which even the best-laid plans turn into their opposite – a dream of freedom into terror, morality into hypocrisy, excessive wealth into poverty for the majority. And is the Covid epidemic not the latest case of such a reversal – all our knowledge of and domination over nature made us helpless victims of life at its most stupid, a simple replicating mechanism of a virus?
So how do we use philosophy to combat the chaos of an upside down world, one gone wrong and turned into its opposite? The reaction of most philosophers would be that reason and the laws of nature shall prevail and the world will come into balance again. But what if unexpected reversals is what the world amounts to and there is no reason or balance or equilibrium? Do we need to accept the fact that nature follows its own path, including cosmic catastrophes, with total indifference towards human history?
Slavoj Žižek posits a philosophy of reversals which disrupts the execution of even the best projects. He explores and illustrates this notion through contemporary ecological thought, the writings of Hegel, psychoanalysis, recent political crises, the history of pandemics and popular culture, and ultimately finds freedom in the deadlocks and paradoxical reversals of the world today.