Architecture, Contingency and Crisis: An Interview with Slavoj Žižek

The current and popular image of natural disaster disseminated by mass media is one of one-off catastrophe, the implied view being that these disasters have been exasperated if not instigated by climate change, which needs checking and balancing with sustainable measures. In his interview with Adrian Lahoud, the influential Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek challenges this predominant view of nature as indomitable and temporarily imbalanced; and in so doing questions the fallacy that the ethical and material cost of consumerist lifestyles can be readdressed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.