Indirectness

Jela Krečič is a researcher at the University of Ljubljana. Her field of research is philosophy, psychoanalysis, aesthetics and popular culture, especially film and TV series. She is the author of Deception in Modern Art and Hollywood (Bloomsbury, 2025). She co-edited Lubitsch Can’t Wait (2014) and The Final Countdown: Europe, Refugees and the Left (2017). Jure Simoniti is a researcher at the University of Ljubljana. He has published books and articles in the fields of linguistics, philosophy of language, psychoanalysis, the theory of truth-values, theory of truth and lying, philosophy of science, as well as realism and idealism. His publications include The Contingent Universality. A New Ontology (Bloomsbury, 2025), Ideas and Idealism in Philosophy (co-edited with G. Kroupa, De- Gruyter, 2023), New Realism and Contemporary Philosophy (co-edited with G. Kroupa, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) and The Untruth of Reality: The Unacknowledged Realism of Modern Philosophy (Lexington Books, 2016).

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.

• Notes on contributorsIntroduction1. Truth and Indirectness, Jela Krečič and Jure SimonitiPart 1. Theories of Indirectness2. Why True Atheism Has to Be Indirect, Slavoj Žižek3. Desire, Hysteria and the Indirectness of Truth, Alenka Zupančič4. Alexandre Kojève: A Philosopher in the Age of Post-Truth, Boris Groys5. Untruth and Directness, Agon HamzaPart 2. Practices of Indirectness6. The Shibboleth of Indirectness, Robert Pfaller7. The Political Void of Contemporary Realism, or of the Coming Anarchy, Catherine Malabou8. Comrade: A Body for Politics, Jodi DeanPart 3. Aesthetics of Indirectness9. Being and Punning, Mladen Dolar10. Adorno’s Exotic Girls of Language, or, The Verfremdworteffekt, Frank Ruda11. Crever dʼesprit: On Matter Directly Incarnating Ideas in Sci-Fi Literature, Miran Božovič12. Tarantino’s Cinema: Fiction against Ideology, Jela Krečič13. Image and Narrative. Indirectness and the Difference between American and European Cinema, Jure Simoniti