Slavoj Žižek

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Slavoj Žižek at the presentation of his book "Blasphemous Thoughts" at the Leipzig Book Fair 2015

Slavoj Žižek [ ʒiʒɛk ] (* 21st March 1949 in Ljubljana , SFRY ) is from Slovenia originating philosopher , cultural critic and theorist of Lacanian psychoanalysis . Žižek is one of the most popular contemporary philosophers who is received worldwide. He has authored over 60 books that have been translated into over 40 languages. He became known for his transfer and further development of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis in the field of popular culture , social criticism and criticism of capitalism . His work follows the tradition of Hegel , Marx and Lacan .

He is professor at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana and international director of the renowned Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London .

Life

Žižek was born in 1949 in the Slovenian part of what was then socialist Yugoslavia . He first studied philosophy at the University of Ljubljana , then from 1981 to 1985 at the University of Paris VIII under Jacques-Alain Miller, an important student, son-in-law and estate administrator of Jacques Lacan. In 1990 Žižek was a candidate for the so-called "collective presidium" of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia , after he was already active as a dissident under real socialism . For a long time he was the editor of the magazine of the Slovene Lacan school “Wo Es war” and, among other things, dealt with the philosophy of German idealism (especially Hegel ) as well as with Karl Marx and with contemporary approaches from the field of post-structuralism, media theory and feminism and cultural studies apart. His first English-language book publication The Sublime Object of Ideology appeared in 1989. Since then, Žižek has published over 20 monographs , in which he initially sought a Lacanian reading of philosophy , popular culture and, in recent years, increasingly political theory .

Žižek is, among other things, professor of philosophy at the university in his hometown of Ljubljana . In 2001 he was a fellow of the Friedrich Nietzsche College . Since the beginning of 2007 he has been the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London .

Under the title Ask Slavoj Žižek he writes a column that appears regularly in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung .

Žižek was married three times and has two sons; with Renata Salecl , a Slovenian philosopher and sociologist from the Laibach Lacan School; from 2005 to 2011 with the model Analia Hounie, the daughter of an Argentine psychoanalyst and since 2013 with the Slovenian journalist Jela Krečič.

Slavoj Žižek is a member of the movement Democracy in Europe 2025 (DiEM25) founded in 2016.

The becoming of the subject

Žižek's texts revolve around identities , identity formation and their changing relationships with the surrounding web of ideologies , social conditions and psychological constellations of the unconscious . Lacan's conception of the other , through which the subject is first constituted as its own , plays a decisive role . According to Lacan, this other has two dimensions: the “ big other ” and the “little other”.

The object small a is the object of desire of the subject, towards which the subject strives and with which it tries to unite - the sexual desire of another person is ideal for this . The object of this desire is basically arbitrary and interchangeable, as long as it fits into the framework of the personal phantasy , the personal phantasies, which make it desirable. Because only a certain place within the psychological structure of the subject gives the object its meaning as - as one could say with a film by Luis Buñuel - "obscure object of desire".

One of the essential properties of this object small a - or its position in the structure of the subject - is that it has always been withdrawn from the subject. It is precisely the lack in the subject that drives the subject to act. Žižek illustrates the MacGuffin object in Hitchcock 's, an intrinsically meaningless and interchangeable object (a secret plan, a formula, etc.) that only serves to set the film's plot in motion: “MacGuffin is clearly objet petit a : the lack, the remnant of the real that sets the symbolic movement of interpretation in motion, a gap in the center of the symbolic order, the mere appearance of a 'secret' to be explained, interpreted. "

The other form of another is the great other - a symbolic authority which guarantees the laws and norms of the social and which first assigns the subject a place within society . The great other can be occupied by various carriers; it can be a parent, but also other caregivers who represent society, such as teachers, judges or police officers. By recognizing this other as the bearer of the function and thus the bearer of the law, the subject subordinates itself to the social whole. For Žižek, this structuring of the subject by the great other is also the essential function of ideology - for which he usually cites the example of Stalinism .

But the great other is not just an ideological authority. Because at the same time - and paradoxically - the subject only gains its actual subject status through this recognition of the other, in that it only finds a place from which it can articulate itself at all, where it finds a language. But this language, and with it the subject as such, is always determined by the other: “I am another”, as Lacan quotes a famous sentence by Arthur Rimbaud . So the subject is basically not a subject, rather a place that is structured from a constitutive outside - by the large as well as the small other - that is not one's own self ; in contrast to Descartes' famous definition : " I think, therefore I am ."

By emphasizing this importance of the other, Žižek not only remains true to Lacan's insights, but also illustrates his proximity to other post-structuralist approaches of a “decentered subject”, such as those found in Gilles Deleuze or Jacques Derrida . Žižek's independence does not consist so much in this thought itself as in the use of numerous examples from politics and popular culture , especially film , with the help of which he applies and illustrates these initially abstract theories, but also develops them further.

The real, the symbolic and the imaginary

The triadic model of the three structural determinations of the psyche - real , symbolic and imaginary (RSI) - plays a central role in Žižek's thinking . Here, too, Žižek's achievement consists primarily in the transfer of abstract Lacanian terms to phenomena from politics, philosophy, everyday life and popular culture.

The real

With Žižek (as with Lacan), the real is an enigmatic term and not to be equated with “ reality ”. Human reality is constructed symbolically, so ultimately a collectively practiced fiction . The real, on the other hand, is a core that cannot be imagined within this order of the symbolic, which cannot be symbolized, i.e. cannot be put into words. It does not have a positive existence, but only exists as something excluded that emerges at the limits of ordinary reality.

Not everything in reality can be exposed as fiction, there always remains a remnant of the real - certain points that have to do with social opposites, with life, death and sexuality or, more generally, with the logically and rationally intangible . The real, insofar as it overwhelms and unsettles the subject, always has something traumatic about it. The real is not an underlying reality behind reality , but consists of the voids that make reality incomplete and inconsistent. In terms of psychoanalysis, this means that reality is not just any narrative among many others; rather, the patient has to recognize, endure and relate the hard core of the real, the traumatic dimension of his inner world.

The triad of the symbolic / real / imaginary / is reflected within each of these three areas of the psychic. Accordingly, there are three modalities of the real:

  • The symbolic real - the signifier reduced to a meaningless formula , which, like any science, touches on the real, but hardly produces comprehensible ideas.
  • The real real - a horrible thing, something that gives the feeling of horror in horror films .
  • The imaginary real - an unfathomable something that shines through things as “ sublime ” ( Kant ). This kind of reality becomes apparent in the film All or Not - Full Monty , for example, in the fact that the unemployed protagonists completely undress during striptease , whereby something sublime, a dignity of their own becomes visible in the additional “voluntary” humiliation.

The symbolic

The symbolic forms the (social) reality of man and its linguistic and normative dimension. Its elements are signifiers; H. meaningful signs that are structured into a "network" of the "symbolic order". The symbolic derives its validity from the authority of the great other insofar as the latter, as masters, significantly structures and legitimizes the network of signifiers as the name-of-the-father . It is thus also the sphere of domination and discourse - whose power Žižek understands primarily as symbolic power.

As a relationship of domination, the symbolic, like the master-servant relationship in Hegel , has a dialectical character based on mutual recognition. So there is “only the one king to whom the others relate as subjects”. At the same time, there is always - except in paranoia - a certain distance between the symbolic and the real: "Not only is the beggar who believes he is a king crazy , but also the king who believes he is a king." has only the symbolic mandate of a king, is only an interchangeable bearer of a function that is actually external to him .

The symbolic also has three dimensions:

  • The real symbolic is the signifier reduced to a meaningless formula.
  • The imaginary symbolic corresponds roughly to the Jungian symbols.
  • The symbolic symbolic is speaking and meaningful language, the “full speaking” of a successful psychoanalysis, for example.

Žižek illustrates the symbolism of the phenomenon of cyberspace . The screen acts as a medium of communication , an inter-face , which refers to the symbolic conveyance of every speech. There is a gap between the person making the testimony and the “position of the testifying” (the nickname , the e-mail address): The signifier is never really me . The speaker does not invent himself, but his virtual existence was in a certain way invented with cyberspace itself. One is dealing here with a fundamental uncertainty about identity , which, however, cannot be broken down into contingent simulacras and mere drawing games. Here, too, as in social life, the symbolic networks revolve around specific, ultimately indissoluble gaps and breaks.

Using the example of cyberspace, Žižek answers a question that is typical of his method and style of thinking. Žižek's question is not : “What can we learn from life about cyberspace”, but the other way around: “What can we learn from cyberspace about life?”. This twisting of questions, which Žižek has varied in different contexts, is used for “theoretical psychoanalysis”: In contrast to “applied psychoanalysis”, it does not want to analyze the works of art and thus make the incomprehensible and foreign understandable, but rather to create a new view of the ordinary, everyday life alienate and develop the theory on the subject.

The imaginary

The imaginary lies on the level of the subject's relationship to himself or to his self-image . It is the place of identification with oneself . According to Lacan, this imaginary relationship to oneself is formed by looking in the mirror at oneself in the mirror stage, whereby Lacan emphasizes that this look at oneself, which always means the imagined gaze of another, is ultimately based on a “misunderstanding” ( see also : Mirror stage ).

The imaginary can also be divided into three parts:

  • A real imaginary (the phantasm that takes the place of the real).
  • An imaginary imaginary (the image itself).
  • A symbolic imaginary (about the archetypes by Jung ). In order to be able to talk about the imaginary, according to Lacan, one always has to be outside of the imaginary: the imaginary is basically always embedded in the symbolic.

According to Lacan, all three levels of the psychic are connected in a kind of Borromean knot , as three rings that are structurally connected and give each other support. If you remove one of them, the other two are no longer connected, which ultimately leads to a traumatic loss of coherence and thus to psychosis . Also in this essential point of his thinking, which he carries out and uses on numerous occasions, Žižek remains loyal to his spiritual teacher. What is new, however, is the interpretation of postmodernism and the political that Žižek undertakes from a Lacanian perspective.

Postmodernism and ideology

In particular, Žižek devotes himself to postmodernism , which confronts psychoanalysis with new questions: due to the disappearance of the “ patriarchal ” structured society and firmly established, authoritarian patterns of order, an important component of psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex , is beginning to falter.

In doing so, Žižek pays particular attention to the production of ideology in contemporary societies, but also to the way in which ideology works in real socialism. According to him, ideology is always made up of two sides of the same coin: the values ​​publicly proclaimed by a political system and the so-called “hidden downside”, a 'dirty' secret. These are the implicitly transported values ​​and premises of an ideology, which, however, must remain unspoken in order for an ideology to function and reproduce itself. To all these ideologically shaped, phantasmatic forms of denial or evasion, Žižek counters the goal of psychoanalysis, which is to "cross the phantasm", to traverse the illusion and to penetrate to the core of enjoyment, the so-called Jouissance .

A so-called “authentic act” destroys the phantasm if it attacks it from the standpoint of the social symptom. As a result, a gesture becomes an act , an event, or, speaking with Alain Badiou , even a “truth event ”. Ideology is the distortion of non-ideology, an originally “utopian moment” ( Fredric Jameson ) into the ideological. According to Žižek, however, the non-ideological part of utopian longing should be taken seriously and respected. For example, the longing for community should not automatically be viewed as “proto-fascist” or even be misunderstood as the root of fascism. This longing only becomes ideological in its fascist reinterpretation.

Nowadays, in the age of cultural capitalism and “post-ideology”, ideology no longer works on the basis of fanatical commitment, but rather, conversely, on the basis of an inner distance and indifference that does not take the symbolic mandate of the subject seriously: a father today often behaves so distantly himself that he self- deprecatedly complained about the stupidity of being a father at all today.

For Žižek, cultural capitalism is the continuation of a kind of virtual hypercapitalism, which confronts us with the master's signifiers in their purest form: Here, the material production of goods must still be ensured, but v. a. The immaterial, a special kind of experience, whereby the relationship between the symbol and its allegory is reversed over time. Emphasis is also placed on property on characters (brands and logos). The post-industrial corporations tend to transform themselves into networks with sub-companies that have to prove themselves independently of the parent company. If the group outsources advertising to a marketing company, and bookkeeping and production move from one cheap location to the next, practically nothing is left of the company except for its logo, the brand name. The sign that has nothing left behind is the ultimate sign - the men's significant. But logic is not itself the fetish; as a general problem of language it refers to the “great other”, since it fills the gap between him and the chains of meaning (of language). The appearance of cultural capitalism affects only a part of the people, and it cannot be made a universal phenomenon.

Politicization and hegemony

In the age after the (alleged) end of ideologies , Žižek criticizes the way in which political decisions are justified. The cut in social spending is sometimes referred to as an apparently objective necessity, which itself can no longer be subject to political discussion. For example, he regards the bourgeois - social democratic idea of citizen participation as ineffective as long as more significant and fundamental measures are not taken in the long term to change society - measures such as limiting the freedom of capital and subordinating the production process to the control of society. Ultimately, Žižek envisions a radical democratic - revolutionary upheaval in society, a "radical re-politicization of the economy".

Building on Herbert Marcuse's catchphrase “ repressive tolerance ”, Žižek criticizes the prevailing ideology of senseless political correctness : “The 'tolerant' multicultural approach avoids” as the dogma of today's society “the crucial question: How can we restore the political space to today's conditions of globalization ? ”Žižek pleads not only for a“ politicization of the economy ”, but also for a“ politicization of politics ”as an alternative to post- modern post-politics . In the area of ​​political decision-making within the framework of a democracy, he particularly criticizes the two-party system that actually prevails in many countries as a manifestation of a choice that basically does not even exist.

Žižek sees the existence of social classes not as a primarily objective determination, as an economic situation vis-à-vis capital, but rather in a “radically subjective” position: the proletariat is the living “embodied contradiction” of society. Standing up for one's own interests today is often discredited as selfish , but in fact, for Žižek, particularism is the key to the dynamism of social movements .

Žižek sees the possibility of politicization - following the hegemony theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe - in the possibility that “a particular demand begins to function as a representative of the impossible general”. Universalism can only arise through particularism in political struggle . Thus, particular demands as “ metaphorical compression” (Laclau / Mouffe) can aim at something more far-reaching, even reaching as far as the reconstruction and questioning of the entire social framework.

According to this, Žižek sees the political conflict as situated between a well-ordered social structure on the one hand and the excluded part that no longer finds a place in this apparently perfect order on the other. This “part without a share” in the whole (cf. also the concept of the precariat ) shakes the entire structure because it refers to or embodies an “empty principle of the general”. The very fact that a society is not easy to divide into classes, that there is no “simple structural feature” for it, that the middle class is also fought over by right-wing populism , is a sign of this ongoing and undecided struggle for hegemony within a society.

Reception and criticism

Žižek is a well-known and influential representative of so-called post - structuralism , which has gained in importance especially in literary studies , sociology , philosophy and political science since the 1970s. Žižek's numerous publications and appearances at scientific congresses are one of the factors behind the growing popularity of Lacanian approaches in the humanities , whose applicability to current phenomena and phenomena that go beyond psychoanalysis Žižek uses many, often entertaining examples. Despite his explanations, which are often difficult to understand, characterized by leaps of thought and quick associations , Žižek is one of the best-known, but also most controversial intellectuals of our time.

Žižek was often criticized for his style, which was popular science , sometimes unclean and craving for punch lines and which fell victim to conceptual and factual sharpness. Some also disparagingly refer to the “star philosopher” as a “philosophy entertainer” or even a “charlatan”. Andreas Dorschel writes in a review on parallax : “Žižek babbles. People who are unable to get to the heart of a matter get into debauchery. […] The fact that Žižek simulates argumentation instead of simply threading up associations, which as a form would be appropriate for the content of his book, seems rigid academic habit. He is a pedant of confusion. Instead of simply spinning, he hangs the result of such actions with footnotes ”.

In terms of content, the alleged carelessness with which Žižek applied his knowledge of psychoanalysis to society was sometimes criticized. In addition, Žižek understood some of the authors to whom he was referring only inadequately: Hegel in particular, but also Lacan himself, for example in his interpretation of Antigone , which Žižek interpreted far more dramatically than Lacan.

Sharp criticism of Žižek's “visions of violence” and his philosophical emptiness is exercised by John N. Gray , who, referring to Žižek's book Less Than Nothing (2012), sums up: “Žižek feigns substance by endlessly repeating a basically empty vision, and his work - which nicely illustrates the principles of paraconsistent logic - in the end results in less than nothing ”.

The ideas in particular about the interpretation of the symbolic, about ideology and postmodernism of the Slovenian Lacan School Žižek had an inspirational effect on the movement New Slovenian Art, which has meanwhile become internationally known, since the early 1980s .

Awards

For his research project “ Antinomies of Postmodern Reason”, Žižek received the cultural and scientific research award of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, endowed with one million German marks .

Publications

Books

  • Le plus sublime des hystériques. Hegel pass. Point Hors Ligne, Paris 1988, ISBN 2-904821-20-1 .
    • German edition: The sublime of all hysterics. Psychoanalysis and the Philosophy of German Idealism Volume 1. 2nd extended edition. Turia + Kant, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85132-028-X .
  • The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, London / New York 1989, ISBN 0-86091-256-6 .
  • Love your symptom like yourself! Jacques Lacan's Psychoanalysis and the Media. Merve, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-88396-081-0 .
  • For They Know Not What They Do. Enjoyment as a Political Factor. Verso, London / New York 1991, ISBN 0-86091-563-8 .
    • German edition: Because they don't know what they're doing. Enjoyment as a political factor . 2nd Edition. Passagen, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85165-846-0 .
  • Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1992, ISBN 0-262-74015-X .
  • Enjoy more. Lacan in popular culture. Turia & Kant, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85132-037-9 (originally in: Wo Es war 1 ).
  • Slavoj Žižek (Ed.): Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). Verso, London / New York 1992, ISBN 0-86091-394-5 .
    • German editions: A triumph of the look over the eye. Psychoanalysis with Alfred Hitchcock. Turia + Kant, Vienna 1998, 3rd edition. 2000, ISBN 3-85132-161-8 ; Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan that Hitchcock never dared to ask. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-518-29180-7 .
  • Tarrying With the Negative. Kant, Hegel & the Critique of Ideology. Duke University Press, Durham NC 1993, ISBN 0-8223-1362-6 .
    • German edition: Dwell on the negative. Psychoanalysis and the Philosophy of German Idealism Volume 2. Turia + Kant, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-85132-061-1 .
  • Grimaces of the real. Jacques Lacan or the monstrosity of the nude. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1993, ISBN 3-462-02253-9 .
  • as editor: Mapping Ideology. Verso, London / New York 1994, ISBN 978-1-84467-554-8 .
  • The Metastases of Enjoyment. Six Essays on Woman and Causality. Verso, London / New York 1994, ISBN 0-86091-444-5 .
    • German edition: The metastases of enjoyment. Six erotic-political attempts . Translated by Karl Bruckschweiger et al. 3rd edition. Passagen, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-7092-0238-8 .
  • Hegel with Lacan. Riss, Zurich 1995, ISBN 3-9520593-1-5 .
  • The Indivisible Remainder. An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters. Verso, London / New York 1996, ISBN 1-85984-094-9 .
    • German edition: The rest that never rises. An experiment on Schelling and the subjects connected with it. Passagen, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-85165-246-0 .
  • The Plague of Fantasies. Verso, London / New York 1997, ISBN 1-85984-193-7 .
    • German edition: The plague of phantasms. The efficiency of the phantasmatic in the new media. Passagen, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-85165-281-9 ; 2nd improved edition. 1999, ISBN 3-85165-384-X .
  • The discomfort in the subject. Passagen, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85165-309-2 .
  • A plea for intolerance. Passagen, Vienna 1988, 6th revised edition. 2015, ISBN 978-3-7092-0188-6 .
  • The Ticklish Subject. The Absent Center of Political Ontology. Verso, London / New York 1999, ISBN 1-85984-894-X .
    • German edition: The problem of the subject. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 3-518-58304-2 .
  • Love your next? No thanks! The dead end of the social in postmodernism. Volk und Welt, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-353-01156-0 .
  • Very intimately and not too quickly. Two essays on sexual difference as a philosophical category. Turia + Kant, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85132-215-0 .
  • Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Contemporary Dialogues on the Left. Verso, London 2000 (with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau ).
    • German edition: Contingency - Hegemony - Universality: Current dialogues on the left. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-85132-720-5 .
  • The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime. On David Lynch's Lost Highway . University of Washington Press, Seattle 2000, ISBN 0-295-97925-9 .
  • The Fragile Absolute. Or: Why the Christian Legacy Is Worth Fighting For? Verso, London / New York 2000, ISBN 1-85984-770-6 .
    • The Fragile Absolute, or Why It Is Worth Defending the Christian Heritage. 2000 Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin, ISBN 3-353-01181-1 .
  • Enjoy your symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. Routledge, London / New York 2001, ISBN 0-415-92812-5 .
  • Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Four Interventions in the (MIS) use of a Notion. Verso, London / New York 2001, ISBN 1-85984-792-7 .
    • German edition: Totalitarianism - Five interventions to use or abuse a term. Laika, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-942281-92-8 .
  • On Belief. Routledge, London / New York 2001, ISBN 0-415-25532-5 .
  • The Fright of Real Tears. Krzysztof Kieślowski Between Theory and Post-Theory. BFI Publishing, London 2001, ISBN 0-85170-755-6 .
    • German edition: The fear of real tears. Krzysztof Kieślowski and the “seam”. Volk und Welt, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-353-01194-3 .
  • Opera's Second Death. Routledge, London / New York 2002, ISBN 0-415-93016-2 (with Mladen Dolar).
    • German edition: The second death of the opera. Kulturverlag Kadmos, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-931659-45-3 .
  • Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates. Verso, London 2002, ISBN 1-85984-421-9 .
    • German edition: Welcome to the desert of the real . 2nd, reviewed edition. Passagen, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-7092-0125-1 .
  • Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences. Routledge, London / New York 2003, ISBN 0-415-96921-2 .
    • German edition: Disembodied organs. Building blocks for an encounter between Deleuze and Lacan. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-518-29298-6 .
  • The Puppet and the Dwarf. The Perverse Core of Christianity. MIT Press, Cambridge MA 2003, ISBN 0-262-74025-7 .
    • German edition: The doll and the dwarf. Christianity between perversion and subversion. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-518-29281-1 .
    • German partial edition: The Reality of Christianity. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-518-06860-1 .
  • (Ed.) Revolution at the Gates. Zizek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings. Verso, London / New York 2004 (new edition 2011), ISBN 1-85984-546-0 .
    • German partial edition: The revolution is imminent. Thirteen attempts on Lenin. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2002, ISBN 3-518-12298-3 .
  • Iraq. The Borrowed Kettle. Verso, London / New York 2004, ISBN 1-84467-001-5 .
  • (with Alain Badiou ) Philosophy and topicality. A dispute. Translated by Maximilian Probst and Sebastian Raedler. Passagen, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85165-673-3 .
  • The political suspension of the ethical. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-12412-9 .
  • The parallactic view of communism. In: DemoPunK / Criticism & Practice Berlin (Ed.): Indeterminate! Communism. texts on economics, politics and culture. Unrast, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-89771-434-5 .
  • The neighbor. Three Inquiries in Political Theology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2006, ISBN 0-226-70738-5 (with Kenneth Reinhard, Eric L. Santner).
  • The Parallax View. MIT Press, Cambridge 2006, ISBN 0-262-24051-3 .
  • How to Read Lacan . Granta, London 2006, ISBN 1-86207-894-7 .
  • Lenin Reloaded. Toward a Politics of Truth. Duke Univ. Press 2007, ISBN 978-0-8223-3941-0 (with Sebastian Budgen and Stathis Kouvelakis as editors).
  • In Defense of Lost Causes . Verso, London / New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-84467-108-3 .
    • German partial edition: Lost. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-12562-5 .
    • German partial edition of the chapters not published by Suhrkamp: The evil spirits of the heavenly realm: The left fight for the 21st century FISCHER paperback, Frankfurt 2011, ISBN 978-3-596-19298-4 .
  • Violence . Profile, London 2008, ISBN 978-1-84668-017-5 .
    • German edition: violence. Six off-site reflections. Translated by Andreas Leopold Hofbauer. Laika, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-942281-91-1 .
  • Psychoanalysis and the philosophy of German idealism. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2008, 2nd edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-85132-790-8 .
  • The courage to throw the first stone. Enjoying within the limits of bare reason. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-85132-512-6 .
  • First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. Verso, London / New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-84467-428-2 .
  • "I hear you with my eyes". Notes on opera and literature. Konstanz University Press, Konstanz 2010, ISBN 978-3-86253-001-4 .
  • Living in the End Times. Verso, London / New York 2010. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
  • Welcome to interesting times. Translated by Erik M. Vogt. Laika, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-942281-93-5 .
  • Less Than Nothing. Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso, London / New York 2012.
    • German edition: Less than nothing. Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-58599-3 .
  • The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. Verso, London / New York 2012.
  • The idea of ​​communism I. Laika, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-942281-28-7 (with Costas Douzinas).
  • The idea of ​​communism II. Laika, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-942281-29-4 (with Alain Badiou).
  • Philosophy and topicality. A dispute. (with Alain Badiou) Translated by Maximilian Probst, Sebastian Raedler. 3. Edition. Passagen, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7092-0201-2 .
  • Across the real. Passagen, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7092-0059-9 .
  • Abyss of Freedom / The Age of the World - essay by Slavoj Žižek with the text by Friedrich Wilhelm J. von Schelling. Laika, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-942281-57-7 .
  • What does Europe want? Laika, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-942281-68-3 ( publisher's website ) (with Srećko Horvat).
  • Event , Penguin, London 2014, ISBN 978-0-7181-9251-8 .
  • Absolute Recoil: Towards A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism. Verso, London / New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-78168-682-9 .
    • German edition: Absolute counter-attack. Attempt to re-establish dialectical materialism. Translated by Frank Born. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-002396-4 .
  • Trouble in Paradise. From the End of History to the End of Capitalism. Allen Lane 2014, ISBN 978-0-241-00496-8 .
    • German edition: Trouble in Paradise. From the end of the history of capitalism. Fischer Wissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-10-002388-9 .
  • The idea of ​​communism III. Laika, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-944233-03-1 (with Alain Badiou).
  • Blasphemous Thoughts: Islam and Modernity. Ullstein, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-550-08116-3 .
  • The divine death instinct. Sigmund Freud Lectures 2015. Ed .: Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-85132-817-2 .
  • Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbors. Allen Lane, London 2016, ISBN 978-0-241-27884-0 .
  • Disparities , Bloomsbury Academic, London 2016
    • German edition: disparities. From the English by Axel Walter. wbg Academic, Darmstadt 2018, ISBN 978-3-534-26971-6 .
  • Incontinence of the Void: Economico-Philosophical Spandrels , MIT Press, Boston 2017, ISBN 978-0262537063
  • The Courage of Hopelessness: Chronicles of a Year of Acting Dangerously , Allen Lane, London 2017, ISBN 978-0241305577 .
    • German edition: The courage of hopelessness , translated by Frank Born, S. Fischer 2018, ISBN 978-3103973341 .
  • Like A Thief In Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Humanity , London 2018, ISBN 978-0-2413-6429-1 .
    • German edition: Like a thief in daylight. Power in the Age of Posthuman Capitalism , Frankfurt am Main 2019, ISBN 978-3-10-397445-4 .
  • Pandemic! Covid-19 Shakes the World. OR Books, New York City 2020.
  • The excess of emptiness. Economic-philosophical notes on sexuality and capital. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-85132-963-6 .

Essays

Interviews

Audio CD

documentary

  • The Pervert's Guide to Cinema , 1, 2, 3 , 2006. Direction and production: Sophie Fiennes , introduced and spoken by Slavoj Žižek (Review by Stefan Höltgen: Žinema. In: F.LM - Texts on the film . April 23, 2009) .
  • The Pervert's Guide to Ideology , 2011. Direction and production: Sophie Fiennes, voiced by Slavoj Žižek.
  • Alien Marx & Co - Slavoj Zizek / by Susan de Beaulieu u. Jean-Baptiste Farkas
  • Love your symptom like yourself , 1996. Directed by Katharina Höcker u. Claudia Wilke

Mockumentary

literature

  • Warren Breckman (translated by Dirk Hommrich): Žižek, Laclau and the end of post-Marxism. In: Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel, Dirk Hommrich (eds.): Unconditional democracy. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2011, 199–214.
  • Rex Butler: Slavoj Žižek as an introduction (original title: Slavoj Žižek. Translated by Bettina Engels). Junius, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-88506-624-6 .
  • Timm Ebner, Jörg Nowak: Structure as a break. Alternatives to the authoritarian post-Althusserianism in Badiou and Žižek. In: The argument . No. 288, 2010.
  • Dominik Finkelde: Slavoj Žižek between Lacan and Hegel. Political Philosophy - Metapsychology - Ethics. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2009 (reprint 2019, ISBN 978-3-85132-946-9 ).
  • Warren Breckman: Adventures of the Symbolic: Postmarxism and Radical Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press 2013, ISBN 978-0-231-14394-3 .
  • Reinhard Heil: The art of the impossible. Slavoj Žižek's concept of the political. In: Oliver wing, Reinhard Heil, Andreas Hetzel (Ed.): The return of the political. Democracy Theories Today. WBG , Darmstadt 2004, ISBN 3-534-17435-6 . (Reading samples)
  • Reinhard Heil: subject and ideology - Althusser - Lacan - Žižek. In: sic et non . Journal for philosophy and culture on the web. 2005.
  • Reinhard Heil: On the topicality of Slavoj Žižek: Introduction to his work. VS , Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-531-16430-4 .
  • Andreas Hetzel, Mechthild Hetzel: Slavoj Žižek. In: Stephan Moebius , Dirk Quadflieg (Ed.): Culture. Present theories. VS, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-531-14519-3 .
  • Hyun Kang Kim: Slavoj Žižek. Fink, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-7705-4674-9 .
  • Christopher Kul-Want: Introducing Slavoj Žižek: A Graphic Guide. Icon Books, Duxford 2011, ISBN 978-1-84831-293-7 .
  • Benjamin Kunkel : Slavoj Žižek: The unbearable lightness of «Communism» , in: Benjamin Kunkel: Utopia or Downfall. A guide to the current crisis , Edition Suhrkamp 2687, Berlin 2014, pp. 148–158, ISBN 978-3-518-12687-5 .
  • Ian Parker: Slavoj Žižek. A Critical Introduction. Pluto Press, London 2004, ISBN 0-7453-2071-6 .
  • Anne Peters: Political loss? A manhunt with Peirce and Žižek. Transcript, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-655-7 (dissertation, Freie Universität Berlin, 2006, 324 pages).
  • Rene Scheu: Slavoj Žižek, the uncomfortable one . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung of March 21, 2019. ( www.nzz.ch )
  • Erik M. Vogt, Hugh J. Silverman: About Žižek. Perspectives and Reviews. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-85132-368-8 .
  • Erik M. Vogt: Slavoj Žižek and contemporary philosophy. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-85132-614-7 .
  • Erik M. Vogt: Aesthetic-Political Readings on the "Wagner Case": Adorno - Lacoue-Labarthe - Žižek - Badiou. Turia + Kant, Vienna / Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-85132-789-2 .
  • Matthias Wallich: Instructions for self-analysis (I). To the latest publications by Slavoj Žižek. In: imprimatur. Project «Critical Journalism in the Church», 2001.

Web links

Commons : Slavoj Žižek  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fellows. In: Klassik-Stiftung.de.
  2. ↑ About Us - Staff. In: The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. (Website).
  3. ↑ https://www.gloria.hr/fokus/zvjezdane-staze/tri-propala-braka-iza-slavoja-zizeka-nakon-razvoda-uvjeren-sam-da-tu-osobu-nikad-nisam-ni-volio / 8810147 /
  4. ^ Website of the DiEM25 movement
  5. ↑ Slavoj Žižek: Love your symptom like yourself. Berlin 1991, p. 58 (see also the explanations under object small a ).
  6. ↑ See hysteria and cyberspace. In: Telepolis. October 7, 1998.
  7. ↑ Ben Wright: Slavoj Žižek. The Reality of the Virtual. Olive Films. 16mm, color, 71 min, 2004.
  8. ^ Slavoj Žižek: A plea for intolerance
  9. ↑ Slavoj Žižek: Why do we all love to hate Haider? In: Eurozine . October 3, 2000.
  10. ↑ See the number of academic publications in English-speaking countries in which Žižek's work is received: search results on scholar.google.com
  11. ↑ Cf. Geoffrey Galt Harpham: Doing the Impossible: Slavoj Žižek and the End of Knowledge. ( Memento of the original from November 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Critical Inquiry. Vol. 29, No. 3/2003. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / business.highbeam.com
  12. ↑ Wilhelm Trapp: The Devil Left a Gap , Review of Parallaxe in der Zeit , November 2, 2006.
  13. ↑ Jörg Lau : Experience is the basis of criticism. In: The time . August 8, 2002.
  14. ↑ Andreas Dorschel: The pedant of confusion. Parallax everywhere: Slavoj Žižek's universal know-it-all. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 6, 2006.
  15. ^ Noah Horwitz: Contra the Slovenians: Returning to Lacan and Away From Hegel. In: Philosophy Today. Spring 2005, pp. 24–32; Ernesto Laclau: Why Constructing a 'People' Is The Main Task of Radical Politics . In: Ernesto Laclau: The Rhetorical Foundations of Society . 2014, pp. 139–179.
  16. ↑ Ernesto Laclau: Why Contructing a `People 'Is The Main Task of Radical Politics . In: Ernesto Laclau (Ed.): The Rhetorical Foundations of Society . Verso, London / New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-78168-170-1 , pp. 165 f . ; Ernesto Laclau, David Howarth: An Interview with Ernesto Laclau . In: David Howarth (Ed.): Ernesto Laclau: Post-Marxism, populism and critique . Routledge, London / New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-415-87086-3 , pp. 271 .
  17. ↑ See Ian Parker: Slavoj Žižek. A Critical Introduction. Pluto, London 2004, p. 78.
  18. ↑ In the original: "Achieving a deceptive substance by endlessly reiterating an essentially empty vision, Žižek's work — nicely illustrating the principles of paraconsistent logic — amounts in the end to less than nothing." John Gray: The Violent Visions of Slavoj Žižek. In: The New York Review of Books . July 12, 2012.
  19. ^ Inke Arns: NSK - An analysis of your artistic strategies in the context of the 1980s in Yugoslavia. Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie , Regensburg 2002, p. 85 ff.
  20. ↑ Ulrich Deuter: The mega-meta-discipline. The grand narratives have fallen silent. In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 22, 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Žižek, Slavoj
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural critic
DATE OF BIRTH March 21, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Ljubljana