About Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek — the maverick philosopher, author of over 30 books and acclaimed as the ‘Elvis of cultural theory’ — is today’s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, literature and jokes — all to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. His recent films The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema and Žižek! reveal a theorist at the peak of his powers and a skilled communicator. His many books include The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Ticklish Subject, The Plague of Fantasies, The Fragile Absolute and In Defense of Lost Causes. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

“Žižek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation.” New Yorker

“The giant of Ljubljana provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus.” The Village Voice

“The Elvis of cultural theory.” Chronicle of Higher Education

“Žižek is a thinker who regards nothing as outside his field: the result is deeply interesting and provocative.” The Guardian

“Žižek is one of the few living writers to combine theoretical rigor with compulsive readability.” Publishers Weekly

“The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in many decades.” Terry Eagleton

“As far as politics is concerned… Zizek’s lesson is as indispensable as it is energising.” Frederic Jameson

“A startling critic of great daring, who doesn’t watch his back or observe the pieties as he swerves and swoops through the age of globalized images and fabricated realities.” Times Literary Supplement

“Zizek is a one-person culture mulcher.” Village Voice Literary Supplement

“With his characteristically frenetic and dizzying display of wit, Zizek will entertain and offend, but never bore.” The Stranger

“The thrill of reading Zizek arises in part from the collision between the insanity he finds everywhere in our psychic and social lives and the rigorous clarity with which he anatomizes its working…” Robert S. Boynton, Lingua Franca

“If Zizek is out of touch with contemporary philosophy, I am the bishop of Ulan Bator… Pedagogic clarity and a gift for entertainment are two of the many excellences.” Radical Philosophy

“One of the most innovative and exciting contemporary thinkers of the left.” Times Literary Supplement

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