Cultural Studies 2008 Slavoj Zizek

Slavov Žižek
In Defense of Lost Causes * Violence: Big Ideas/Small Books

Slavov Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Princeton, and The New School. Arguably the only living philosopher who uses popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Lacan to explain popular culture, his work is both eccentric and deeply thoughtful and has garnered him a large following internationally. A philosopher, psychoanalyst film buff, amateur theologian and plotical analyst, he is the author of more than thirty books which cover a range of topics from the expected (Kant and Heidegger), to the politically charged (Abu Ghraib), to the wholly unexpected (M. Night Shyamalan’s commercial failure The Village). He is the subject of the documentary Žižek! and his own critically acclaimed documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, was the subject of a film retrospective in 2007 at the Museum of Modern Art.