Slavoj iek

1 Early life

"iek and Zizek redirect here. For the biographical

documentary lm, see Zizek!.

iek was born in Ljubljana, SR Slovenia, Yugoslavia, to

a middle-class family. His parents were both atheists.[16]
His father Joe iek was an economist and civil servant
from the region of Prekmurje in eastern Slovenia. His
mother Vesna, native of the Brda region in the Slovenian
Littoral, was an accountant in a state enterprise.[16][17]
He spent most of his childhood in the coastal town
of Portoro, during which time he was formatively exposed to noncommunist Western lm, popular culture,
and theory.[4][18] The family moved back to Ljubljana
when Slavoj was a teenager. iek attended Beigrad
High School.[18] In 1967, he enrolled at the University
of Ljubljana, where he studied philosophy and sociolBorn in Slovenia and educated in Ljubljana and later
ogy. He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from
Paris, iek rst achieved international recognition after
the University of Ljubljana in 1981 with a dissertation
the 1989 publication of his rst English text, The Subunder the title The Theoretical and Practical Relevance
lime Object of Ideology, in which he departed from traof French Structuralism.[19]
ditional Marxist theory to develop a materialist conception of ideology that drew heavily on Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian idealism.[3][4] His early theoretical work became increasingly eclectic and political in the 2 Career
1990s, dealing frequently in the critical analysis of disparate forms of popular culture and making him a popular gure of the academic Left.[3][5] A critic of capitalism iek began his studies in an era of liberalization of
and neoliberalism, iek identies as a political radical, the Titoist Yugoslavia. Already prior to his enrollment
[16]
and his work has been characterized as challenging or- to university, he began reading French structuralists.
thodoxies of both the political right and the left-liberal In 1967, he published the rst translation of a text by
[16]
Among his early inacademy.[4][6][7] His prodigious body of writing spans Jacques Derrida to Slovenian.
dense theoretical polemics, academic tomes, and acces- uences was the Slovenian Marxist philosopher Boidar
sible introductory books; in addition, he has taken part Debenjak who introduced the thought of the Frankfurt
[20]
in various lm projects, including two documentary col- School to Slovenia. Debenjak taught the philosophy of
laborations with director Sophie Fiennes, The Perverts German idealism at the Faculty of Arts of the University
Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Perverts Guide to Ideol- of Ljubljana, and his reading of Marxs Das Kapital from
the perspective of Hegels Phenomenology of the Mind inogy (2012).
uenced many future Slovenian philosophers, including
ieks unorthodox style, popular academic works, fre- iek.[21]
quent magazine op-eds, and critical assimilation of high
and low culture have gained him international inuence iek frequented the circles of dissident intellectuals, inand a substantial audience outside of academia in addi- cluding the Heideggerian philosophers Tine Hribar and
[16]
and published articles in alternative
tion to controversy and criticism.[6][8][9][10][11] In 2012, Ivo Urbani,
Foreign Policy listed iek on its list of Top 100 Global magazines, such as Praxis, Tribuna and Problemi, of
[18]
In 1971, he was given
Thinkers, calling him a celebrity philosopher,[12] while which he was also an editor.
elsewhere he has been dubbed the "Elvis of cultural employment at the University of Ljubljana as an assistant
theory and the most dangerous philosopher in the researcher with the promise of tenure, but was dismissed
West.[13][14] ieks work was chronicled in a 2005 doc- after his Masters thesis was explicitly accused of being
[22]
umentary lm entitled Zizek! A scholarly journal, the non-Marxist. He spent the next few years undertakInternational Journal of iek Studies, was also founded ing national service in the Yugoslav army in Karlovac.
to engage his work.[15]
ieks early work used the work of Jacques Lacan to
interpret Hegelian and Marxist philosophy. During this
Slavoj iek (Slovene pronunciation: [slavoj ik];
born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian psychoanalytic
philosopher, cultural critic, and a Marxist scholar. He
is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and
Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University,[1]
and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the
Humanities.[2] His work is located at the intersection of
a range of disciplines, including continental philosophy,
political theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, lm criticism, and theology.

PUBLIC LIFE

time in the 1980s, he also edited and translated into

Slovene Lacan, Sigmund Freud, and Louis Althusser.[23]
He completed his second doctorate (Doctor of Philosophy in psychoanalysis) at the University of Paris VIII in
1985[19] under Jacques-Alain Miller and Franois Regnault.
In addition, he wrote the introduction to Slovene translations of G. K. Chesterton's and John Le Carr's detective
novels. In 1988, he published his rst book dedicated entirely to lm theory. iek achieved international recognition as a social theorist with the 1989 publication of his
rst book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology.
iek has been publishing on a regular basis in journals
such as Lacanian Ink and In These Times in the United
States, the New Left Review and The London Review of
Books in the United Kingdom, and with the Slovenian
left-liberal magazine Mladina and newspapers Dnevnik
and Delo. He also co-operates with the Polish leftist magazine Krytyka Polityczna, regional southeast European
left-wing journal Novi Plamen, and serves on the editorial
board of the psychoanalytical journal Problemi.

Politics

In the late 1980s, iek came to public attention as a

columnist for the alternative youth magazine Mladina,
which assumed a critical stance towards the Titoist
regime, criticizing several aspects of Yugoslav politics,
especially the militarization of society. He was a member
of the Communist Party of Slovenia until October 1988,
when he quit in protest against the JBTZ trial together
with 32 other Slovenian public intellectuals.[24] Between
1988 and 1990, he was actively involved in several political and civil society movements which fought for the
democratization of Slovenia, most notably the Committee
for the Defence of Human Rights.[25] In the rst free elections in 1990, he ran as the Liberal Democratic Party's
candidate for Slovenian presidency (an oce formally
abolished in the 1991 constitution).
Despite his activity in liberal democratic projects, iek
remains committed to the communist ideal and is critical
of right-wing circles, such as nationalists, conservatives,
and classical liberals both in Slovenia and worldwide.
He wrote that the convention center in which nationalist
Slovene writers hold their conventions should be blown
up, adding, Since we live in the time without any sense
of irony, I must add I don't mean it literally.[26] Similarly, he jokingly made the following comment on May
2013, during Subversive Festival: If they don't support
SYRIZA, then, in my vision of the democratic future,
all these people will get from me [is] a rst-class oneway ticket to [a] gulag. In response, the right-wing New
Democracy party claimed ieks comments should be
understood literally, not ironically.[27][28]

iek seen here signing books in 2009.

Now!, he described himself as a communist in a qualied

sense, and in another appearance in October 2009 he
described himself as a radical leftist.[29][30] The following year iek appeared in the Arte documentary Marx
Reloaded in which he defended the idea of communism.
In 2013, he corresponded with Pussy Riot member and
activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in a series of letters
while she was imprisoned for hooliganism.[31]

4 Public life
In 2003, iek wrote text to accompany Bruce Weber's
photographs in a catalog for Abercrombie & Fitch. Questioned as to the seemliness of a major intellectual writing
ad copy, iek told the Boston Globe, If I were asked
to choose between doing things like this to earn money
and becoming fully employed as an American academic,
kissing ass to get a tenured post, I would with pleasure
choose writing for such journals!"[32]

iek and his thought have been the subject of several

documentaries. In The Reality of the Virtual (2004),
iek gives an hour lecture on his interpretation of Lacans tripartite thesis of the imaginary, the symbolic, and
the real. Zizek! is a 2005 documentary by Astra Taylor on his philosophy. Liebe Dein Symptom wie Dich
selbst! (1996) is a German documentary on him. The
Perverts Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Perverts Guide
to Ideology (2012) also portray ieks ideas and cultural
In a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy criticism. Examined Life (2008) features iek speaking

6.2

Political thought and the postmodern subject

about aesthetics at a garbage dump. He was also featured is Not', point towards an inconsistent (Barred) Real itin Marx Reloaded (2011), directed by Jason Barker.
self that Lacan conceptualized prior.[39]
Foreign Policy named iek one of its 2012 Top
100 Global Thinkers for giving voice to an era of
absurdity.[12]
The British Royal Opera House announced on January
2013 that four new operas inspired by ieks writings
have been commissioned.[10]

Personal life

iek has been married three times: rstly, to Renata

Salecl,[33] another Slovene philosopher; secondly, to fashion model Analia Hounie, daughter of an Argentine Laiek speaking in 2011
canian psychoanalyst; and thirdly, to the Slovene journalist Jela Krei, daughter of the historian of architecture
iek argues that although there are multiple Symbolic
Peter Krei.[34][35]
interpretations of the Real, they are not all relatively
He is a uent speaker of Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, En- true. iek identies two instances of the Real: the
glish, French, and German.
abject Real (or real Real), which cannot be wholly integrated into the symbolic order, and the symbolic Real,
a set of signiers that can never be properly integrated
into the horizon of sense of a subject. The truth is re6 Thought
vealed in the process of transiting the contradictions; or
the real is a minimal dierence, the gap between the
6.1 Ontology, ideology, and the Real
innite judgement of a reductionist materialism and experience as lived,[40] developing his thesis of the ParalIn developing a thesis of ideology and its function, iek
lax of dialectical antagonisms as inherent to reality itself,
makes two intertwined arguments:[36]
and developing Dialectical Materialism - contra Engels as a new materialist Hegelianism, incorporating the in1. He begins with a critique of Marx's concept of ide- sights of Lacanian psychoanalysis, set theory, quantum
ology (as described in The German Ideology) in physics, and contemporary continental philosophy (most
which people are beholden to false consciousness notably in his magnum opus Less than Nothing: Hegel
that prevents them from seeing how things really are. and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (2012), as
iek argues, continuing Althusser, that ideology is well as Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of
thoroughly unconscious; and that ideology functions Dialectical Materialism (2014)).[41][42]
as a series of justications and spontaneous sociosymbolic rituals which support virtual authorities.
2. However, the Real is not equivalent to the reality experienced by subjects as a meaningfully ordered totality. For iek, the Real names points within the
ontological fabric, knitted by the hegemonic systems
of representation and reproduction, that nevertheless resist full inscription into its terms and that may
as such attempt to generate sites of active political
resistance.
Drawing on Lacans notion of the barred subject, for
iek the subject is a purely negative entity, a void of negativity (in the Hegelian sense), which allows for the exibility and reexivity of the cartesian Cogito (Transcendental Subject).[3][37] iek claims that though consciousness is opaque, following Hegel, that the epistemological gap between the In-itself and For-itself is immanent
to reality itself;[38] that the antinomies of Kant, quantum
physics, and Badious 'materialist' principle that 'The One

6.2 Political thought and the postmodern

subject
iek argues that the state is a system of regulatory institutions that shape our behavior. Its power is purely symbolic and has no normative force outside of collective behavior. In this way, the term the law signies societys
basic principles, which enable interaction by prohibiting
certain acts.[43]
Political decisions for iek have become depoliticized
and accepted as natural conclusions. For example, controversial policy decisions (such as reductions in social
welfare spending) are presented as apparently objective
necessities. Although governments make claims about increased citizen participation and democracy, the important decisions are still made in the interests of capital. The
two-party system dominant in the United States and elsewhere produces a similar illusion.[44] iek says that it is

7 CRITICISM

still necessary to engage in particular conictssuch as

labor disputesbut the trick is to relate these individual
events to the larger struggle. Particular demands, if executed well, might serve as metaphorical condensation for
the system and its injustices. The real political conict
for iek is between an ordered structure of society and
those without a place in it.[45]

egories of analysis and having a 19th-century understanding of class. For example, Ernesto Laclau argued
that "iek uses class as a sort of deus ex machina to
play the role of the good guy against the multicultural
devils.[57] The use of such analysis, however, is not
systematic and draws on critical accounts of Stalinism
and Maoism, as well as post-structuralism and Lacanian
[58]
In stark contrast to the intellectual tenets of the European psychoanalysis.
universalist Left in general, and those Jrgen Haber- For some, iek represents one of two trajectories in conmas dened as postnational, in particular, iek spares temporary thought of a progressive alternative.[59][60] On
no eorts in his clear and unequivocal defense of the the one side are those thinkers like iek and Alain Bapro-sovereignty and pro-independence processes opened diou who embrace communism as the only radical alterin Europe.[46]
native to the current social, political, and economic ariek argues that the postmodern subject is cynical to- rangements. They draw their inspiration from the soward ocial institutions, yet at the same time believes in cial theory of Marxism, and extend it to form a radconspiracies. When we lost our shared belief in a single ical critique of capitalism, contemporary politics, and
power, we constructed another of the Other in order to es- neoliberalism in general. They advocate a withdrawal
cape the unbearable freedom that we faced.[47] For iek, from, in ieks words, everyday material social life,
it is not enough to merely know that you are being lied to, and decry anyone who abandons the hypothesis of com(Badiou) as resigning themselves to the market
particularly when continuing to live a normal life under munism [59]
economy.
capitalism. Although one may possess a self-awareness,
iek argues, just because one understands what one is For Roberto Mangabeira Unger, an alternative path not
doing does not mean that one is doing the right thing.[48]
trodden by thinkers like iek and Badiou is that of rethinking structural transformation and the construction of
iek has said that he considers religion not an enemy
[59]
but rather one of the elds of struggle. In a 2006 New an alternative vision of social arrangements. Although
iek and Unger have been compared for their mutual
York Times op-ed he made the argument for atheism, arguing that religious fundamentalists are, in a way, no dif- encounter with Hegel and Marx, as well as by their experience of engagement in the political life of their respecferent from godless Stalinist Communists. He argued
that both value divine will and salvation over moral or tive countries, for Unger, the lack of a clear vision of alternatives in contemporary thinkers like iek represents
ethical action.[49][50]
a betrayal of our most important attribute: our power to
resist and to reshape the social and conceptual worlds in
which we nd ourselves.[59]

Criticism

Many hundreds of academics have addressed aspects of

ieks work in professional papers,[51] and in 2007, the
International Journal of iek Studies was established for
the discussion of his work. There are two main themes of
critique of ieks ideas: his failure to articulate an alternative or program in the face of his denunciation of contemporary social, political, and economic arrangements,
and his lack of rigor in argumentation.[52]

7.1

iek does not agree with his critics who attribute to him
a belief in necessitationism and has stated:
There is no such thing as the Communist big Other, theres no historical necessity or teleology directing and guiding our actions. (In Slovene: "Ni komunistinega velikega Drugega, nobene zgodovinske nujnosti ali
teleologije, ki bi usmerjala in vodila naa dejanja".)[26]

Ambiguity and lack of alternatives

In his book Living in the End Times iek acknowledges part of his critics of being ambiguous and multilatieks philosophical and political positions are not al- eral in his positions.:
ways clear, and critiques have called him out on his failure to take a consistent stance.[53] He has claimed to stand
[...] I am attacked for being anti-Semitic
by a revolutionary Marxist project, but his lack of vision
and for spreading Zionist lies, for being
or circumstance of revolution makes it unclear what that
a covert Slovene nationalist and unpatriotic
project consists of. According to some, his theoretical artraitor to my nation, for being a crypto-Stalinist
gument often lacks historical fact, which lends him more
defending terror and for spreading Bourgeois
to provocation rather than insight.[54][55][56]
lies about Communism... so maybe, just
ieks refusal to present an alternative vision has led
critics to accuse him of using unsustainable Marxist cat-

maybe I am on right path, the path of delity

to freedom.[61]

7.2

Unorthodox style and scholarship

Critics complain of a theoretical chaos in which questions and answers are confused and in which iek constantly recycles old ideas which were scientically refuted
long ago or which in reality have quite a dierent meaning than iek gives to them.[62] Harpham calls ieks
style a stream of nonconsecutive units arranged in arbitrary sequences that solicit a sporadic and discontinuous
attention.[63] O'Neill concurs: a dizzying array of wildly
entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance.[64]

in 2006 iek plagiarized substantial passages from an

earlier review that rst appeared in the White Nationalist
journal American Renaissance, a publication condemned
by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the organ of a
white nationalist hate group.[68] However, in response
to the allegations, iek stated:
When I was writing the text on Derrida
which contains the problematic passages, a
friend told me about Kevin Macdonalds theories, and I asked him to send me a brief resume. The friend send [sic] it to me, assuring
me that I can use it freely since it merely resumes anothers line of thought. Consequently,
I did just that and I sincerely apologize for not
knowing that my friends resume was largely
borrowed from Stanley Hornbecks review of
Macdonalds book. [...] As any reader can
quickly establish, the problematic passages are
purely informative, a report on anothers theory for which I have no anity whatsoever; all
I do after this brief resume is quickly dismissing Macdonalds theory as a new chapter in the
long process of the destruction of Reason. In
no way can I thus be accused of plagiarizing
anothers line of thought, of stealing ideas. I
nonetheless deeply regret the incident.[69]

Such presentation has laid him open to accusations of

misreading other philosophers, particularly Jacques Lacan and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. iek carries over many concepts from Lacans teachings into the
sphere of political and social theory, but has a tendency
to do so in an extreme deviation from its psychoanalytic
context.[65] Similarly, according to some critics, ieks
conation of Lacans unconscious with Hegels unconscious is mistaken. Noah Horwitz, in an eort to dissociate Lacan from the more problematic Hegel, interprets
the Lacanian unconscious and the Hegelian unconscious
as two totally dierent mechanisms. Horwitz points out,
in Lacan and Hegels diering approaches to the topic
of speech, that Lacans unconscious reveals itself to us
in parapraxis, or slips-of-the-tongue. We are therefore,
according to Lacan, alienated from language through the 8 Filmography
revelation of our desire (even if that desire originated with
the Other, as he claims, it remains peculiar to us). In
Hegels unconscious, however, we are alienated from lan- 9 References
guage whenever we attempt to articulate a particular and
end up articulating a universal. For example, if I say 'the 9.1 Bibliography
dog is with me', although I am trying to say something
about this particular dog at this particular time, I actually Main article: Slavoj iek bibliography
produce the universal category 'dog,' and therefore express a generality, not the particularity I desire. Hegels
argument implies that, at the level of sense-certainty, we
can never express the true nature of reality. Lacans ar- 9.2 Citations
gument implies, to the contrary, that speech reveals the
[1] Visiting Faculty. New York University.
true structure of a particular unconscious mind.[66]

[2] http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/aboutus/staff/zizek

7.3

Accusations of plagiarism in 2014

ieks tendency to recycle portions of his own texts

in subsequent works resulted in the accusation of selfplagiarism by The New York Times in 2014, after iek
published an op-ed in the magazine which contained portions of his writing from an earlier book.[67] In response,
iek expressed perplexity at the harsh tone of the denunciation, emphasizing that the recycled passages in question only acted as references from his theoretical books
to supplement otherwise original writing.[67]
On 11 July 2014, leading American weekly newsmagazine Newsweek reported that in an article published

[3] Britannica
[4] Slavoj iek, by Matthew Sharpe, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002, http://www.iep.
utm.edu/zizek/. 27 September 2015.
[5] Kirk Boyle. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Slavoj
ieks Psychoanalytic Marxism. International Journal
of iek Studies. Vol 2.1. (link)
[6] Spiegel
[7] Ian Parker, Slavoj iek: A Critical Introduction (London:
Pluto Press, 2004).
[8] The Telegraph

[9] Salon
[10] O'Hagan, Sean (13 January 2013). Slavoj iek: a
philosopher to sing about. The Guardian. Retrieved 13
January 2013.
[11] Ceasere Magazine
[12] The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers. Foreign Policy.
26 November 2012. Archived from the original on 28
November 2012. Retrieved 28 November 2012.
[13] International Journal of iek Studies, home page. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
[14] Vice
[15] http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/about
[16] Kdo je kdaj: Slavoj iek. Tisti poslednji marksist, ki
je iz lozoje naredil pop in iz popa lozojo [Whos
When: Slavoj iek. The Last of the Marxists who made
Pop from Philosophy and Philosophy from Pop] (in Slovenian). Mladina. 24 October 2004. Retrieved 13 August
2010.
[17] Slovenski biografski leksikon (Ljubljana: SAZU, 1991),
XV. edition
[18] Slovenska pomlad: Slavoj iek (Webpage run by the
National Museum of Modern History in Ljubljana)".
Slovenskapomlad.si. 29 September 1988. Retrieved 4
June 2011.
[19] Slavoj Zizek - His Life
[20] Delavsko-punkerska univerza. Dpu.mirovni-institut.si.
22 February 1999. Retrieved 13 August 2010.
[21] Tednik, tevilka 04, Dr. Boidar Debenjak, lozof.
Mladina.Si. 6 February 2009. Retrieved 13 August 2010.
[22] ieks response to the article "e sem v kaj resnino
zaljubljena, sem v ivljenje (Sobotna priloga Dela, p. 37
(19.1. 2008)

REFERENCES

[30] Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism,

Healthcare, Latin American Populism and the Farcical Financial Crisis. Democracynow.org. Retrieved 13
August 2010.
[31] Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riots prison letters
to Slavoj iek.
[32] Glenn, Joshua. The Examined Life: Enjoy Your Chinos!", Boston Globe. 6 July 2003. H2.
[33] Interview with Renata Salecl. Mladina. 29 July 2010.
Retrieved 4 December 2012.
[34] "ika vzela Jela z Dela. Delo. 1 July 2013. Retrieved 3
July 2013.
[35] Philosopher and Beauty. Delo. 29 March 2005. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
[36] iek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. New
York: Verso, 1989.
[37] Sinnerbrink, Robert (2008). The Hegelian 'Night of the
World': iek on Subjectivity, Negativity, and Universality. International Journal of iek Studies 2 (2). ISSN
1751-8229. Retrieved 17 August 2012. This extraordinary analysis of the transcendental imagination, critique
of Heidegger, and rereading of Hegelian 'night of the
world,' together contribute to ieks reassertion of the
radicality of the 'Cartesian subject'that thoroughly repudiated theoretical spectre which nonetheless continues
to 'haunt Western academia' (1999: 15). This unorthodox reading of the Hegelian 'night of the world'the radical negativity that haunts subjectivityis developed further in an explicitly political direction, which helps explain ieks recent critique of the 'Fukuyamaian' consensus, shared both by moral-religious conservatives and libertarian 'postmodernists, that global capitalism remains
the 'unsurpassable horizon of our times.
[38] Eyers, Tom; Harman, Graham; Johnston, Adrian; Gaufey,
Guy Le; McGowan, Todd; Rousselle, Duane; Riha, Jelica
umi; Riha, Rado (2013-01-01). Umbr(a): The Object.
Umbr(a) Journal. ISBN 9780979953965.

[23] Prevajalci Drutvo slovenskih knjievnih prevajalcev.

Dskp-drustvo.si. Retrieved 7 January 2012.

[39] Zizek, Slavoj (2012-05-22). Less Than Nothing: Hegel

and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso Books.
ISBN 9781844679027.

[24] Skupinski protestni izstop iz ZKS. Slovenska Pomlad.

28 October 1998.

[40] Zizek, On Belief

[25] Odbor za varstvo lovekovih pravic. Slovenska Pomlad.

3 June 1998

[41] iek, Slavoj (2012-05-22). Less Than Nothing: Hegel

and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso Books.
ISBN 9781844678976.

[26] Interview with iek part two, Delo, 2 March 2013.

[27] Sabby Mionis (6 March 2012). Israel must ght to keep
neo-Nazis out of Greeces government. Haaretz. Retrieved 6 March 2012.
[28] Slovenian philospher Zizek proposes 'gulag' for those
who do not support SYRIZA. 20 May 2013. Retrieved
20 May 2013.
[29] Democracy Now! television program online transcript, 11
March 2008.

[42] Zizek, Slavoj (2014-10-07). Absolute Recoil: Towards A

New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism. Verso Books.
ISBN 9781781686836.
[43] iek, For They Know Not What They Do
[44] A Plea for Intolerance
[45] iek, Slavoj (1999). Political Subjectivization and
Its Vicissitudes. The Ticklish Subject: the absent
centre of political ontology. London: Verso. ISBN
9781859848944.

9.3

Sources

[46] iek: The force of universalism is in you Basques, not

in the Spanish state, Interview in ARGIA (27 June 2010)
[47] iek, Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan
through Popular Culture

[60] MacNeil, William, 1999. Taking Rights Symptomatically Jouissance, Coupure, Objet Petit a. Grith Law
Review 8.
[61] Slavoj iek. Living in the End Times.

[48] iek, Slavoj (18 March 1999). You May!". London Review of Books 21 (6). Retrieved 20 August 2012. But
the notion is undermined by the rise of what might be
called 'Post-Modern racism', the surprising characteristic
of which is its insensitivity to reection a neo-Nazi skinhead who beats up black people knows what hes doing,
but does it anyway. Reexivisation has transformed the
structure of social dominance. Take the public image of
Bill Gates....

[62] See e.g. David Bordwell, Slavoj iek: Say Anything,

DavidBordwell.net blog, April 2005.; Philipp Oehmke,
Welcome to the Slavoj Zizek Show. Der Spiegel Online (International edition), 7 August 2010 ; Jonathan Re,
Less Than Nothing by Slavoj iek review. A march
through Slavoj ieks 'masterwork'". The Guardian, 27
June 2012.

[49] iek, Slavoj. Atheism is a legacy worth ghting for.

The New York Times. 13 March 2006.

[64] O'Neill, The Last Analysis of Slavoj iek

[63] Harpham Doing the Impossible: Slavoj iek and the

End of Knowledge

[53] Kuhn, Gabriel (2011). The Anarchist Hypothesis, or Badiou, iek, and the Anti-Anarchist Prejudice Alpine Anarchist. Retrieved 4 September 2013.

[65] Ian Parker, Slavoj iek: A Critical Introduction (Pluto

Press: London and Sterling, 2004) p.78-80. For example,
ieks appropriation of Lacans discussion of Antigone
in his 1959/1960 seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.
In this seminar, Lacan uses Antigone to defend the claim
that the only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to ones desire (Slavoj iek,
The Metastases of Enjoyment, Verso: London, 1994; p.
69). However, as Parker notes, Antigones act (burying
her dead brother in the knowledge that she will be buried
alive) was never intended to eect a revolutionary change
in the political status quo; yet, despite this, iek frequently cites Antigone as a paradigm of ethico-political
action.

[54] Gray, John (12 July 2012). The Violent Visions of Slavoj
iek. New York Review of Books. Retrieved 22 September 2012.

[66] Noah Horwitz, Contra the Slovenians: Returning to Lacan and away from Hegel (Philosophy Today, Spring
2005, pp. 2432.

[55] Holbo, John (1 January 2004).

On iek and
Trilling. Philosophy and Literature 28 (2): 430440.
doi:10.1353/phl.2004.0029. ...an unhealthy anti-liberal is
one, like Z+iz=ek, who ticks and tocks in unreective revulsion at liberalism, pantomiming that he is de Maistre
(or Abraham) or Robespierre (or Lenin) by turns, lest he
look like Mill.

[67] Newsweek

[50] Zizek, Slavoj. Atheism is a Legacy Worth Fighting For.

News.Genius.com. Retrieved Mon., 18 August 2014.
[51] Google Scholar search for Zizek. Google Scholar. Retrieved 4 June 2011.
[52] Korstanje M (2015) A Dicult World, examining the
roots of Capitalism. New York, Nova Science Publishers.

[56] Holbo, John (17 December 2010). Zizek on the Financial Collapse and Liberalism. Crooked Timbers. Retrieved 21 August 2012. To review: Zizek does this liberal
= neoliberal thing. Which is no good. And he doesn't even
have much to say about economics. And Zizek does this
liberal = self-hating pc white intellectuals thing. Which is
no good.
[57] Butler, Judith, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj iek Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. Verso. London, New York City 2000.
pp. 202206

[68] Did Marxist Philosophy Superstar Slavoj iek Plagiarize a White Nationalist Journal?". Newsweek. 11 July
2014. Retrieved 13 July 2014.
[69] Dean, Michelle. Slavoj iek Sorta Kinda Admits
Plagiarizing White Supremacist Journal. Gawker.com.
Gawker Online. Retrieved 20 February 2015.

9.3 Sources
Canning, P. The Sublime Theorist of Slovenia: Peter Canning Interviews Slavoj iek in Artforum,
Issue 31, March 1993, pp. 849.

10 External links

[58] Bill Van Auken; Adam Haig (12 November 2010). Zizek
in Manhattan: An intellectual charlatan masquerading as
left"". World Socialist Web Site. Retrieved 21 August
2012.

Slavoj iek at DMOZ

[59] Skof, Lenart. 2010. On Progressive Alternative: Unger

Versus iek. Synthesis Philosophica 49.

ieks entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Slavoj iek Faculty Page at European Graduate

School

10
iek bibliography at Lacanian Ink Magazine
Column archive at The Guardian
Appearances on C-SPAN

Slavoj iek at the Internet Movie Database

EXTERNAL LINKS

11
11.1

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