Between nature and culture: Heidegger and Žižek on the thing and the subject

In this paper it is demonstrated how Žižek's thought is premised upon a misreading of Heidegger's early notion of being-in-the-world, which allows him to understand Heidegger's Nazi engagement and his later work in such a way as to avoid confronting the question of the subject that the true development of Heidegger's thought poses. It is shown that the opposition Heidegger posits between present-at-hand and ready-to-hand, addresses the ancient question of the relation between nature and culture, which is also Žižek's own problem. Žižek's reading of Heidegger's early work allows him to ignore the alternative way in which his own problematic is worked out in the later Heidegger, in a way that leads beyond the subject