Žižek is a brilliant writer, and Perceval doesn't really understand Žižek at all if he thinks he's a "postmodernist", but I have to agree that it's easy to waste a lot of your life and mental energy studying Žižek and not get very much out of it.
I say that only as someone who spent a lot of time reading many of his books, and discussing his work only in a rather informal, amateurish context, so perhaps I am pretty unqualified.
But my warning to HN readers about Žižek is that while his columns and short commentary can be very clever, his real theoretical work all starts with a foundation built on top of Marxism and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Granted, Žižek reinterprets both of those disciplines in clever, Hegelian ways that might make them unrecognizable at first glance to the modern reader, but if you're of the opinion that those two disciplines have little to offer intellectually (and I suspect most HN readers are in this boat), you'll ultimately look at the time you spent puzzling out Žižek and want those hours of your life back.
I say that only as someone who spent a lot of time reading many of his books, and discussing his work only in a rather informal, amateurish context, so perhaps I am pretty unqualified.
But my warning to HN readers about Žižek is that while his columns and short commentary can be very clever, his real theoretical work all starts with a foundation built on top of Marxism and Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Granted, Žižek reinterprets both of those disciplines in clever, Hegelian ways that might make them unrecognizable at first glance to the modern reader, but if you're of the opinion that those two disciplines have little to offer intellectually (and I suspect most HN readers are in this boat), you'll ultimately look at the time you spent puzzling out Žižek and want those hours of your life back.