Book excerpt: This book is an original investigation into Slavoj Žižek's return to German Idealism in the wake of Lacanian psychoanalysis. As is well known, Žižek creates productive friction between these traditions by isolating their mutually compatible notions of the death drive, paving the way for Žižek's highly original model of the subject. Joseph Carew systematizes the stark metaphysical consequences of Žižek's account. If the emergence of the Symbolic out of the Real marks the advent of a completely self-enclosed structural system, then we must posit the absolute as a fragile not-all wrought by negativity and antagonism.