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Articles

Slavoj Žižek – The Elvis of Philosophy?

Chris Bainbridge zips through the greatest hits of the celebrity post-Marxist.

“The thinker of choice for Europe’s young intellectual vanguard”, a “punk philosopher”, “a roller-coaster ride”, “sometimes bonkers but never boring” and “the Elvis of philosophers” are among the many things that have been said about Slovenian philosopher, culture critic and psychoanalyst Slavoj Žižek and his works. Žižek (born 1949), who packs out public lecture halls around the world, is currently International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London and Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Ljubljana – from which he was expelled in the 1970s because his PhD thesis was “too Hegelian and not Marxist enough.” He’s made films too, including one entitled The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema (2006). There is even an Institute of Žižek Studies. When Slovenia became independent from Yugoslavia in 1991, it instituted a four-person Presidency, for which Žižek stood.

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