This collection rethinks the relationship between objectivity and fiction beyond the realism-nominalism divide through a series of 'objective fictions', such as fetishes, semblances, lies, rumours, sophistry, fantasies and conspiracy theories. The contributors include Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Frank Ruda and Samo Tomsič.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Beyond the Nominalism-Realism Divide: Objective Fictions from Bentham through Marx to Lacan
• 1. Marx’s Theory of Fictions
• 2. Is Surplus Value Structured Like an Anamorphosis? Marx, Lacan and the Structure of Objective Fiction
• 3. Shades of Green: Lacan and Capitalism’s Veils
• 4. From the Orderly World to the Polluted Unworld
• 5. The Genesis of a False Dichotomy: A Critique of Conceptual Alienation
• 6. Nietzsche’s Critique of Objectivity and Its ‘Tools’
• 7. Tips and Tricks: Remarks on the Debate between Badiou and Cassin on ‘Sophistics’
• 8. On Rumours, Gossip and Related Matters
• 9. ‘There is no such thing as the subject that thinks’: Wittgenstein and Lacan on Truth and the Subject
• 10. The Awful Truth: Games and Their Relation to the Unconscious
• 11. The Objective Construction: Freud and the Primal Scene
• 12. (From the Lie in the Closed World to) Lying in an Infinite Universe
• 13. A Short Essay on Conspiracy Theories
• Index