Slavoj i ek

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" i ek" and "Zizek" redirect here. For the biographical documentary film, see Zizek!
.
Slavoj i ek
Slavoj i ek in Liverpool, England, 2008
Born
21 March 1949 (age 66)
Ljubljana, PR Slovenia,
FPR Yugoslavia
Alma mater
University of Ljubljana
University of Paris VIII
Era
20th- / 21st-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School
Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis
Lacanian psychoanalysis
Hegelianism
Marxism
Main interests
Ideology Marxism Ontology Political theory Psychoanalysis Cultural studies Film
theory Theology German idealism
Notable ideas
Ideology as an unconscious fantasy that structures reality
Transcendental materialism
Influences[show]
Influenced[show]
Slavoj i ek (Slovene pronunciation: ['slavoj '?i??k] ( listen); born 21 March 1949)
is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural critic, and Marxist intellectual. He is a
senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the Universit
y 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 draws on an eclectic range of disciplines, including political theory,
metaphysics, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, film criticism, and theology.
i ek first achieved international recognition as a theorist after the 1989 publicat
ion of his first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, which drew lar
gely on the work of G.W.F. Hegel and Lacanian psychoanalysis to develop a materi
alist conception of ideology as inescapable unconscious fantasy that structures
reality for the subject, departing from traditionalist Marxist interpretations o
f the term.[3][4] His work became increasingly political in the 1990s, aligning
him somewhat with contemporary Marxist thinkers such as Frederic Jameson and Ala
in Badiou, and presaged his increased public presence during the 2000s.[5][6] A
leftist critic of capitalism and neoliberalism, i ek identifies as a political radi
cal, while his work has also been characterized as challenging orthodoxies of th
e left-liberal academy.[7][8][9] His prodigious body of work spans dense theoret
ical tomes, accessible shorter books, and documentary films; among his best know
n works are Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002), The Parallax View (2006),
and Living in the End Times (2010), and two film collaborations with director So
phie Fiennes, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) and The Pervert's Guide to Id
eology (2012).
i ek's unorthodox style, popular academic works, frequent magazine op-eds, and irre
verent assimilation of high and low forms of culture have gained him internation
al influence and a substantial audience outside of academia in addition to contr
oversy and criticism.[10][11][12][13][14] In 2012, Foreign Policy listed i ek on it
s list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, calling him "a celebrity philosopher,"[15] wh
ile elsewhere he has been dubbed the "Elvis of cultural theory" and "the most da
ngerous philosopher in the West."[16][17] i ek's work was chronicled in a 2005 docu

mentary film entitled Zizek! A scholarly journal, the International Journal of

Studies, was also founded to engage his work.[18]

i ek

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Academia
1.2 Politics
1.3 Public life
2 Thought
2.1 Ontology, ideology, and the Real
2.2 Political thought and the postmodern subject
3 Criticism
3.1 Ambiguity and lack of alternatives
3.2 Unorthodox style and scholarship
3.3 Accusations of plagiarism in 2014
4 Filmography
5 Critical introductions to i ek
6 References
6.1 Bibliography
6.2 Citations
6.3 Sources
7 External links
Biography[edit]
i ek was born in Ljubljana, SR Slovenia, Yugoslavia, to a middle-class family. His
parents were both atheists.[19] His father Jo e i ek was an economist and civil serva
nt 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 enterpr
ise.[19][20] He spent most of his childhood in the coastal town of Portoro .[21] T
he family moved back to Ljubljana when Slavoj was a teenager. i ek attended Be igrad
High School.[21] In 1967, he enrolled at the University of Ljubljana, where he s
tudied philosophy and sociology. He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from
the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Par
is VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and Franois Regnault.
i ek has been married three times: firstly, to Renata Salecl,[22] another notable S
lovene philosopher; secondly, to fashion model Analia Hounie, daughter of an Arg
entine Lacanian psychoanalyst; and thirdly, to the Slovene journalist Jela Kreci
c, daughter of the renowned historian of architecture Peter Krecic.[23][24]
He is a fluent speaker of Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, English, French, and German.
Academia[edit]
i ek began his studies in an era of liberalization of the Titoist Yugoslavia. Alrea
dy prior to his enrollment to university, he began reading French structuralists
.[19] In 1967, he published the first translation of a text by Jacques Derrida t
o Slovenian.[19] Among his early influences was the Slovenian Marxist philosophe
r Bo idar Debenjak who introduced the thought of the Frankfurt School to Slovenia.
[25] Debenjak taught the philosophy of German idealism at the Faculty of Arts of
the University of Ljubljana, and his reading of Marx's Das Kapital from the per
spective of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind influenced many future Slovenian p
hilosophers, including i ek.[26]
i ek frequented the circles of dissident intellectuals, including the Heideggerian
philosophers Tine Hribar and Ivo Urbancic,[19] and published articles in alterna
tive magazines, such as Praxis, Tribuna and Problemi, of which he was also an ed
itor.[21] In 1971, he was given employment at the University of Ljubljana as an
assistant researcher with the promise of tenure, but was dismissed after his Mas
ter's thesis was explicitly accused of being "non-Marxist."[27] He spent the nex
t few years undertaking national service in the Yugoslav army in Karlovac.

i ek's early work used Jacques Lacan to interpret Hegelian and Marxist philosophy.
During this time in the 1980s, he also edited and translated into Slovene Lacan,
Sigmund Freud, and Louis Althusser.[28] 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 first book dedicated entirely to film theory. i ek achi
eved international recognition as a social theorist with the 1989 publication of
his first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology.
i ek 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 Mladin
a and newspapers Dnevnik and Delo. He also co-operates with the Polish leftist m
agazine Krytyka Polityczna, regional southeast European left-wing journal Novi P
lamen, and serves on the editorial board of the psychoanalytical journal Problem
i.[citation needed]
Politics[edit]
In the late 1980s, i ek came to public attention as a columnist for the alternative
youth magazine Mladina, which assumed a critical stance towards the Titoist reg
ime, criticizing several aspects of Yugoslav politics, especially the militariza
tion of society. He was a member of the Communist Party of Slovenia until Octobe
r 1988, when he quit in protest against the JBTZ trial together with 32 other Sl
ovenian public intellectuals.[29] Between 1988 and 1990, he was actively involve
d in several political and civil society movements which fought for the democrat
ization of Slovenia, most notably the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights.
[30] In the first free elections in 1990, he ran as the Liberal Democratic Party
's candidate for Slovenian president (an office formally abolished in the 1991 c
onstitution).
Despite his activity in liberal democratic projects, i ek remains committed to the
communist ideal and is critical of right-wing circles, such as nationalists, con
servatives, and classical liberals both in Slovenia and worldwide. He wrote that
the convention center in which nationalist Slovene writers hold their conventio
ns should be blown up, adding, "Since we live in the time without any sense of i
rony, I must add I don't mean it literally."[31] Similarly, he jokingly made the
following comment on May 2013, during Subversive Festival: "If they don't suppo
rt SYRIZA, then, in my vision of the democratic future, all these people will ge
t from me [is] a first-class one-way ticket to [a] gulag." In response, the righ
t-wing New Democracy party claimed i ek's comments should be understood literally,
not ironically.[32][33]
i ek seen here signing books in 2009.
In a 2008 interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, he described himself as
a "communist in a qualified sense," and in another appearance in October 2009 he
described himself as a "radical leftist."[34][35] The following year i ek appeared
in the Arte documentary Marx Reloaded in which he defended the idea of communis
m.
In 2013, he corresponded with Pussy Riot member and activist Nadezhda Tolokonnik
ova in a series of letters while she was imprisoned for hooliganism.[36]
Public life[edit]
In 2003, i ek wrote text to accompany Bruce Weber's photographs in a catalog for Ab
ercrombie & Fitch. Questioned as to the seemliness of a major intellectual writi
ng ad copy, i ek told the Boston Globe, "If I were asked to choose between doing th
ings 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 su
ch journals!"[37]

i ek and his thought have been the subject of several documentaries. In The Reality
of the Virtual (2004), i ek gives an hour lecture on his interpretation of Lacan's
tripartite thesis of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. Zizek! is a 200
5 documentary by Astra Taylor on his philosophy. Liebe Dein Symptom wie Dich sel
bst! (1996) is a German documentary on him. The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006)
and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012) also portray i ek's ideas and cultural
criticism. Examined Life (2008) features i ek speaking about aesthetics at a garbag
e dump. He was also featured in Marx Reloaded (2011), directed by Jason Barker.
Foreign Policy named i ek one of its 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers "for giving voice
to an era of absurdity."[15]
The British Royal Opera House announced on January 2013 that four new operas ins
pired by i ek's writings have been commissioned.[13]