Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949, Ljubljana, Slovenia) is a communist philosopher, cultural theorist, and public intellectual. He studied philosophy and sociology at the University of Ljubljana, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971, a Master of Arts degree in philosophy in 1975, and a Doctor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1981. In 1985, he completed a second doctorate in psychoanalysis at Université Paris VIII.

From 1979 to 2001, Žižek worked as a researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy of the University of Ljubljana, which became part of the Faculty of Social Sciences as the Institute for Social Sciences in 1992. Between 2000 and 2002, he directed the research project “Antinomies of the Postmodern Reason” at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in Essen, Germany. Since 2002, he has served as a Senior Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, and since 2005 he has been co-director of the International Center for Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. In the same year, he was awarded the title of Doctor Causa Honoris by the University of Córdoba, Argentina.

Žižek’s work focuses primarily on reading Hegel through Lacanian theory, developing a materialist interpretation of Christianity, and advancing a communist critique of liberal democracy. Among his most influential publications are “The Sublime Object of Ideology” (1989), “Less Than Nothing” (2012), “Lenin 2017: Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through” (2017), “The Courage of Hopelessness” (2018), and “Hegel in a Wired Brain” (2021). He is also the author and presenter of the documentary films “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema” and “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology,” and has contributed extensively to public debate through essays, articles, and media commentary.