Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian
Marxist
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
public intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and Human self-reflection, reflection about the nature of reality, especially the nature of society and proposed solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the wor ...
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
, Global Distinguished Professor of German at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
, professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School and senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana (, , ), abbreviated UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 38,000 enrolled students. The university has 23 faculties and three art academies with approximately 4,000 teaching and re ...
. He primarily works on
continental philosophy
Continental philosophy is a group of philosophies prominent in 20th-century continental Europe that derive from a broadly Kantianism, Kantian tradition.Continental philosophers usually identify such conditions with the transcendental subject or ...
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...
and
Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: Academic criticism by film studies, film scholars, who study the composition of film theory and publish ...
and
theology
Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...
German idealism
German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary ...
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
op-ed
An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
s, and academic works, characterised by the use of obscene jokes and pop cultural examples, as well as politically incorrect provocations, have gained him fame, controversy and criticism both in and outside academia.
Life and career
Early life
Žižek was born in
Ljubljana
{{Infobox settlement
, name = Ljubljana
, official_name =
, settlement_type = Capital city
, image_skyline = {{multiple image
, border = infobox
, perrow = 1/2/2/1
, total_widt ...
Yugoslavia
, common_name = Yugoslavia
, life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation
, p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia
, flag_p ...
, into a middle-class family. His father Jože Žižek was an economist and civil servant from the region of
Prekmurje
Prekmurje (; Prekmurje Slovene: ''Prèkmürsko'' or ''Prèkmüre''; ) is a geographically, linguistically, culturally, and ethnically defined region of Slovenia, settled by Slovenes and a Hungarians in Slovenia, Hungarian minority, lying betwee ...
in eastern Slovenia. His mother Vesna, a native of the Gorizia Hills in the Slovenian Littoral, was an accountant in a state enterprise. His parents were atheists. He spent most of his childhood in the coastal town of Portorož, where he was exposed to Western film, theory and popular culture. When Žižek was a teenager his family moved back to Ljubljana where he attended Bežigrad High School. Originally wanting to become a filmmaker himself, he abandoned these ambitions and chose to pursue philosophy instead.
Education
In 1967, during an era of liberalization in Titoist Yugoslavia, Žižek enrolled at the
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana (, , ), abbreviated UL, is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. It has approximately 38,000 enrolled students. The university has 23 faculties and three art academies with approximately 4,000 teaching and re ...
and studied philosophy and sociology.Tony Meyer Slavoj Zizek - His Life lacan.com, from: Slavoj Zizek, London: Routledge, 2003.
Žižek had already begun reading French structuralists prior to entering university, and in 1967 he published the first translation of a text by Jacques Derrida into Slovenian. Žižek frequented the circles of dissident intellectuals, including the Heideggerian philosophers Tine Hribar and Ivo Urbančič, and published articles in alternative magazines, such as '' Praxis'', ''Tribuna'' and ''Problemi'', which he also edited. In 1971 he accepted a job as an assistant researcher with the promise of tenure, but was dismissed after his Master's thesis was denounced by the authorities as being "non-Marxist".Žižek's response to the article "Če sem v kaj resnično zaljubljena, sem v življenje Sobotna priloga Dela, p. 37 (19.1. 2008) He graduated from the University of Ljubljana in 1981 with a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy for his dissertation entitled ''The Theoretical and Practical Relevance of French Structuralism''. He spent the next few years in what was described as "professional wilderness", also fulfilling his legal duty of undertaking a year-long national service in the Yugoslav People's Army in
Karlovac
Karlovac () is a city in central Croatia. In the 2021 census, its population was 49,377.
Karlovac is the administrative centre of Karlovac County. The city is located southwest of Zagreb and northeast of Rijeka, and is connected to them via the ...
.
Academic career
During the 1980s, Žižek edited and translated
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...
,
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
, and Louis Althusser. He used Lacan's work to interpret Hegelian and Marxist philosophy.
In 1986, Žižek completed a second doctorate (
Doctor of Philosophy
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...
in
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...
) at the
University of Paris VIII
Paris 8 University (), or usually the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis or Paris 8, is a public university in the Paris Metropolitan Area, Greater Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public ...
under Jacques-Alain Miller, entitled "La philosophie entre le symptôme et le fantasme".
Žižek wrote the introduction to Slovene translations of G. K. Chesterton's and John le Carré's detective novels.
In 1988, he published his first book dedicated entirely to
film theory
Film theory is a set of scholarly approaches within the academic discipline of film or cinema studies that began in the 1920s by questioning the formal essential attributes of motion pictures; and that now provides conceptual frameworks for und ...
, ''Pogled s strani''. The following year, he achieved international recognition as a social theorist with the 1989 publication of his first book in English, ''The Sublime Object of Ideology''.
Žižek has been publishing in journals such as '' Lacanian Ink'' and '' In These Times'' in the United States, the ''
New Left Review
The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective.
History Background
As part of the emergin ...
'' and '' The London Review of Books'' in the United Kingdom, and with the Slovenian left-liberal magazine '' Mladina'' and newspapers '' Dnevnik'' and '' Delo''. He also cooperates with the Polish leftist magazine '' Krytyka Polityczna'', regional southeast European left-wing journal '' Novi Plamen'', and serves on the editorial board of the psychoanalytical journal ''Problemi''. Žižek is a series editor of the Northwestern University Press series Diaeresis that publishes works that "deal not only with philosophy, but also will intervene at the levels of ideology critique, politics, and art theory".
In 2012, ''
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...
'' listed Žižek on its list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, calling him "a celebrity philosopher", while elsewhere he has been dubbed the " Elvis of cultural theory" and "the most dangerous philosopher in the West". Žižek has been called "the leading Hegelian of our time", and "the foremost exponent of Lacanian theory". A journal, the ''International Journal of Žižek Studies'', was founded by professors David J. Gunkel and Paul A. Taylor to engage with his work.
Political career
In the late 1980s, Žižek came to public attention as a columnist for the alternative youth magazine '' Mladina'', which was critical of Tito's policies, Yugoslav politics, especially the militarization of society. He was a member of the League of Communists of Slovenia until October 1988, when he quit in protest against the JBTZ trial together with 32 other Slovenian intellectuals. Between 1988 and 1990, he was actively involved in several political and
In 2003, Žižek wrote text to accompany Bruce Weber's photographs in a catalog for Abercrombie & Fitch. Questioned as to the seemliness of a major intellectual writing ad copy, Žižek told ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...
'', "If I were asked to choose between doing things like this to earn money and becoming fully employed as an American academic, kissing ass to get a tenured post, I would with pleasure choose writing for such journals!"
Žižek and his thought have been the subject of several documentaries. The 1996 '' Liebe Dein Symptom wie Dich selbst!'' is a German documentary on him. In the 2004 '' The Reality of the Virtual'', Žižek gave an hour-long lecture on his interpretation of Lacan's tripartite thesis of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real. '' Zizek!'' is a 2005 documentary by Astra Taylor on his philosophy. The 2006 '' The Pervert's Guide to Cinema'' and 2012 '' The Pervert's Guide to Ideology'' also portray Žižek's ideas and cultural criticism. '' Examined Life'' (2008) features Žižek speaking about his conception of
ecology
Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...
at a garbage dump. He was also featured in the 2011 '' Marx Reloaded'', directed by Jason Barker.
''
Foreign Policy
Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...
'' named Žižek one of its 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers "for giving voice to an era of absurdity".
In 2019, Žižek began hosting a mini-series called ''How to Watch the News with Slavoj Žižek'' on the RT network. In April, Žižek debated psychology professor Jordan Peterson at the Sony Centre in
Toronto, Canada
Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
versus
Marxism
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflict, ...
.
Personal life
Žižek has been married four times and has two adult sons, Tim and Kostja. His second wife was Slovene philosopher and socio-legal theorist Renata Salecl, fellow member of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis. His third wife was Argentinian model and Lacanian scholar Analia Hounie, whom he married in 2005. Currently, he is married to Slovene journalist, author and philosopher, Jela Krečič.
In early 2018, Žižek experienced Bell's palsy on the right side of his face. He went on to give several lectures and interviews with this condition; on March 9 of that year, during a lecture on political revolutions in London, he commented on the treatment he had been receiving, and used his paralysis as a metaphor for political idleness.
Aside from his native Slovene, Žižek is a fluent speaker of
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian ( / ), also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually i ...
Hero
A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or Physical strength, strength. The original hero type of classical epics did such thin ...
'', ''
Hitman
Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, moneta ...
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of art film, arth ...
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...
. His theories have been applied to studying a variety of literature, including ''
Finnegans Wake
''Finnegans Wake'' is a novel by Irish literature, Irish writer James Joyce. It was published in instalments starting in 1924, under the title "fragments from ''Work in Progress''". The final title was only revealed when the book was publishe ...
''.
Thought and positions
Žižek and his thought have been described by many commentators as " Hegelo- Lacanian". In his early career, Žižek claimed "a theoretical space moulded by three centres of gravity: Hegelian dialectics, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary criticism of
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
", designating "the theory of
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...
" as the fundamental element. In 2010, Žižek instead claimed that for him Hegel is more fundamental than Lacan—"Even Lacan is just a tool for me to read Hegel. For me, always it is Hegel, Hegel, Hegel."—while in 2019, he claimed that "For me, in some sense, all of philosophy happened in hefifty years" between
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy and t ...
(1831). Alongside his academic, theoretical works, Žižek is a prolific commentator on current affairs and contemporary political debates.
Subjectivity
For Žižek, although a subject may take on a symbolic (social) position, it can never be reduced to this attempted symbolisation, since the very "taking on" of this position implies a separate 'I', beyond the symbolic, that does the taking on. Yet, under scrutiny, nothing positive can be said about this subject, this 'I', that eludes symbolisation; it cannot be discerned as anything but "that which cannot be symbolised". Thus, without the initial, attempted, failed symbolisation, subjectivity cannot present itself. As Žižek writes in his first book in English: "the subject of the signifier is a retroactive effect of the failure of its own representation; that is why the failure of representation is the only way to represent it adequately."
Žižek attributes this position on the subject to Hegel, particularly his description of man as "the night of the world", and to Lacan, with his description of the barred, split subject, who he sees as developing the Cartesian notion of the cogito. According to Žižek, these thinkers, in insisting on the role of the subject, run counter to " culturalist" or " historicist" positions held by thinkers such as Louis Althusser and
Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...
, which posit that "subjects" are bound by and reducible to their historical/cultural(/symbolic) context.
Political theory
Ideology
Žižek's Lacanian-informed theory of
ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
is one of his major contributions to political theory; his first book in English, '' The Sublime Object of Ideology'', and the documentary '' The Pervert's Guide to Ideology'', in which he stars, are among the well-known places in which it is discussed. Žižek believes that ideology has been frequently misinterpreted as dualistic and, according to him, this misinterpreted dualism posits that there is a real world of material relations and objects outside of oneself, which is accessible to reason.
For Žižek, as for Marx, ideology is made up of fictions that structure political life; in Lacan's terms, ideology belongs to the symbolic order. Žižek argues that these fictions are primarily maintained at an unconscious level, rather than a conscious one. Since, according to
psychoanalytic theory
Psychoanalytic theory is the theory of the innate structure of the human soul and the dynamics of personality development relating to the practice of psychoanalysis, a method of research and for treating of Mental disorder, mental disorders (psych ...
, the unconscious can determine one's actions directly, bypassing one's conscious awareness (as in parapraxes), ideology can be expressed in one's behaviour, regardless of one's conscious beliefs. Hence, Žižek breaks with orthodox Marxist accounts that view ideology purely as a system of mistaken beliefs (see False consciousness). Drawing on Peter Sloterdijk's '' Critique of Cynical Reason'', Žižek argues that adopting a cynical perspective is not enough to escape ideology, since, according to Žižek, even though postmodern subjects are consciously cynical about the political situation, they continue to reinforce it through their behaviour.
Freedom
Žižek claims that (a sense of) political freedom is sustained by a deeper unfreedom, at least under liberal capitalism. In a 2002 article, Žižek endorses
Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...
's distinction between formal and actual freedom, claiming that liberal society only contains formal freedom, "freedom of choice ''within'' the coordinates of the existing power relations", while prohibiting actual freedom, "the site of an intervention that undermines these very coordinates." In an oft-quoted passage from a book published in the same year, he writes that, in these conditions of liberal censorship, "we 'feel free' because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom". In a 2019 article, he writes that Marx "made a valuable point with his claim that the market economy combines in a unique way political and personal freedom with social unfreedom: personal freedom (freely selling myself on the market) is the very form of my unfreedom." However, in 2014, he rejects the "pseudo-Marxist" total derision of 'formal freedom', claiming that it is necessary for critique: "When we are formally free, only then we become aware how limited this freedom actually is."
Žižek co-signed a petition condemning the "use of disproportionate force and retaliatory brutality by the Hong Kong Police against students in university campuses in Hong Kong" during the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. The petition concludes with the statement: "We believe the defence of
academic freedom
Academic freedom is the right of a teacher to instruct and the right of a student to learn in an academic setting unhampered by outside interference. It may also include the right of academics to engage in social and political criticism.
Academic ...
, the
freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been r ...
,
freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic Media (communication), media, especially publication, published materials, shoul ...
,
freedom of assembly
Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of individuals to peaceably assemble and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their ideas. The right to free ...
and association, and the responsibility to protect the safety of our students are universal causes common to all."
Theology
Žižek has asserted that "
Atheism
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the Existence of God, existence of Deity, deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the ...
is a legacy worth fighting for" in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. However, he nonetheless finds extensive conceptual value in
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
, particularly Protestantism: the subtitle of his 2000 book ''The Fragile Absolute'' is "Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?". Hence, he labels his position ' Christian Atheism', and has written about theology at length.
In '' The Pervert's Guide to Ideology'', Žižek suggests that "the only way to be an Atheist is through Christianity", since, he claims, atheism often fails to escape the religious paradigm by remaining faithful to an external guarantor of meaning, simply switching God for natural necessity or evolution. Christianity, on the other hand, in the doctrine of the incarnation, brings God down from the 'beyond' and onto earth, into human affairs; for Žižek, this paradigm is more authentically godless, since the external guarantee is abolished.
Communism
Although sometimes adopting the title of 'radical leftist', Žižek also controversially insists on identifying as a communist, even though he rejects 20th century communism as a "total failure", and decries "the communism of the 20th century, more specifically all the network of phenomena we refer to as
Stalinism
Stalinism (, ) is the Totalitarianism, totalitarian means of governing and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union (USSR) from History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), 1927 to 1953 by dictator Jose ...
as "maybe the worst ideological, political, ethical, social (and so on) catastrophe in the history of humanity." Žižek justifies this choice by claiming that only the term 'communism' signals a genuine step outside of the existing order, in part since the term 'socialism' no longer has radical enough implications, and means nothing more than that one "care for society."
In '' Marx Reloaded'', Žižek rejects both 20th-century
totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public s ...
and " spontaneous local self-organisation, direct democracy, councils, and so on". There, he endorses a definition of communism as "a society where you, everyone would be allowed to dwell in his or her stupidity", an idea with which he credits
Fredric Jameson
Fredric Ruff Jameson (April 14, 1934 – September 22, 2024) was an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He was best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmode ...
as the inspiration.
Žižek has labelled himself a "communist in a qualified sense"''Democracy Now!'' television program online transcript , 11 March 2008. and as a "moderately conservative Communist". When he spoke at a conference on ''The Idea of Communism'', he applied (in qualified form) the 'communist' label to the Occupy Wall Street protestors:
Electoral politics
In May 2013, during Subversive Festival, Žižek commented: "If they don't support
SYRIZA
The Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (), best known by the syllabic abbreviation SYRIZA ( ; ; a pun on the Greek adverb , meaning "from the roots" or "radically"), is a Centre-left politics, centre-left to Left-wing politi ...
, then, in my vision of the democratic future, all these people will get from me sa first-class one-way ticket to
gulag
The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...
." In response, the center-right New Democracy party claimed Žižek's comments should be understood literally, not ironically.
Just before the 2017 French presidential election, Žižek stated that one could not choose between Macron and Le Pen, arguing that the neoliberalism of Macron just gives rise to neofascism anyway. This was in response to many on the left calling for support for Macron to prevent a Le Pen victory.
In 2022, Žižek expressed his support for the Slovenian political party Levica (The Left) at its 5th annual conference.
Support for Donald Trump's election
In a 2016 interview with
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...
, Žižek said that were he American, he would vote for
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
in the 2016 United States presidential election:
These views were derisively characterised as accelerationist by ''Left Voice'', and were labelled "regressive" by Noam Chomsky.
In 2019 and 2020, Žižek defended his views, saying that Trump's election "created, for the first time in I don't know how many decades, a true American left", citing the boost it gave
Bernie Sanders
Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician and activist who is the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from the state of Vermont. He is the longest-serving independ ...
2020 United States presidential election
United States presidential election, Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 3, 2020. The Democratic Party (United States), Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and California junior senator Kamala H ...
, Žižek reported himself "tempted by changing his position", saying "Trump is a little too much". In another interview, he stood by his 2016 "wager" that Trump's election would lead to a socialist reaction ("maybe I was right"), but claimed that "now with coronavirus: no, no—no Trump. ... difficult as it is for me to say this, but now I would say ' Biden better than Trump', although he is far from ideal." In his 2022 book, ''Heaven in Disorder'', Žižek continued to express a preference for Joe Biden over Donald Trump, stating "Trump was corroding the ethical substance of our lives", while Biden lies and represents big capital more politely.
Social issues
Žižek's views on social issues such as
Eurocentrism
Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism)
refers to viewing Western world, the West as the center of world events or superior to other cultures. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world to just the con ...
,
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as Permanent residency, permanent residents. Commuting, Commuter ...
and
LGBT
LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...
people have drawn criticism and accusations of bigotry.
Europe and multiculturalism
In his 1997 article 'Multiculturalism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism', Žižek critiqued multiculturalism for privileging a culturally 'neutral' perspective from which all cultures are disaffectedly apprehended in their particularity because this distancing reproduces the racist procedure of Othering. He further argues that a fixation on particular identities and struggles corresponds to an abandonment of the universal struggle against global capitalism.
In his 1998 article 'A Leftist Plea for "Eurocentrism"', he argued that Leftists should 'undermine the global empire of capital, not by asserting particular identities, but through the assertion of a new universality', and that in this struggle the European universalist value of equaliberty (
Étienne Balibar
Étienne Balibar (; ; born 23 April 1942) is a French philosopher. He has taught at the University of Paris X, at the University of California, Irvine and is currently an Anniversary Chair Professor at the Centre for Research in Modern European ...
's term) should be foregrounded, proposing 'a Leftist appropriation of the European legacy'. Elsewhere, he has also argued, defending
Marx
Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...
, that Europe's destruction of non-European tradition (e.g. through imperialism and slavery) has opened up the space for a 'double liberation', both from tradition and from European domination.
In her 2010 article 'The Two Zizeks', Nivedita Menon criticised Žižek for focusing on differentiation as a colonial project, ignoring how assimilation was also such a project; she also critiqued him for privileging the European Enlightenment Christian legacy as neutral, 'free of the cultural markers that fatally afflict all other religions.' David Pavón Cuéllar, closer to Žižek, also criticised him.
In the mid-2010s, over the issue of Eurocentrism, there was a dispute between Žižek and Walter Mignolo, in which Mignolo (supporting a previous article by Hamid Dabashi, which argued against the centrality of European philosophers like Žižek, criticised by Michael Marder) argued, against Žižek, that decolonial struggle should forget European philosophy, purportedly following Frantz Fanon; in response, Žižek pointed out Fanon's European intellectual influences, and his resistance to being confined within the black tradition, and claimed to be following Fanon on this point. In his book ''Can Non-Europeans Think?'' (foreworded by Mignolo), Dabashi also critiqued Žižek for privileging Europe; Žižek argued that Dabashi slanderously and comically misrepresents him through misattribution, a critique supported by Ilan Kapoor.
Transgender issues
In his 2016 article "The Sexual Is Political", Žižek argued that all subjects are, like transgender subjects, in discord with the sexual position assigned to them. For Žižek, any attempt to escape this antagonism is false and utopian: thus, he rejects both the reactionary attempt to violently impose sexual fixity and the " postgenderist" attempt to escape sexual fixity entirely; he aligns the latter with 'transgenderism', which he claims does not adequately describe the behaviour of actual transgender subjects, who seek a stable "place where they could recognise themselves" (e.g., a bathroom that confirms their identity). Žižek argues for a third bathroom: a "GENERAL GENDER" bathroom that would represent the fact that both sexual positions (Žižek insists on the unavoidable "twoness" of the sexual landscape) are missing something and thus fail to adequately represent the subjects that take them on.
In his 2019 article "Transgender dogma is naive and incompatible with Freud", Žižek argued that there is "a tension in LGBT+ ideology between social constructivism and (some kind of biological) determinism", between the idea that gender is a social construct, and the idea that gender is essential and pre-social. He concludes the essay with a " Freudian solution" to this deadlock:
Che Gossett criticized Žižek for his use of the "pathologising" term "transgenderism" throughout the 2016 article, and for writing "about trans subjectivity with such assumed authority while ignoring the voices of trans theorists (academics and activists) entirely", as well as for purportedly claiming that a "futuristic" vision underlies so-called "transgenderism", ignoring present-day oppression. Sam Warren Miell and Chris Coffman, both psychoanalytically inclined, have separately criticized Žižek for conflating transgenderism and postgenderism; Miell further criticised the 2014 article for rehearsing homophobic/transphobic clichés (including Žižek's designation of inter-species marriage as a possible "anti-discriminatory demand"), and misusing Lacanian theory; Coffman argued that Žižek should have engaged with contemporary Lacanian trans studies, which would have shown that psychoanalytic and transgender discourses were aligned, not opposed. In response to the title of the 2019 article, McKenzie Wark had t-shirts made with the transgender flag and "Incompatible with Freud" printed on them.
Žižek defended his 2016 article in two follow-up pieces. The first addresses purported misreadings of his position, while the second is a more sustained defence (against Miell) of the article's application of Lacanian theory, to which Miell responded in turn. Douglas Lain also defended Žižek, claiming that context makes it clear that Žižek is "not opposed othe struggle of LGBTQ people" but is instead critiquing "a phony liberal ideology that set up the terms of the LGBTQ struggle", "a certain utopian postmodern ideology that seeks to eliminate all limits, to eliminate all binaries, to go beyond norms because the imposition of a limit is patriarchal and oppressive."
In a 2023 piece for ''Compact Magazine'', Žižek took a hard stance against access to puberty blockers for trans youth, and against trans adults being sent to prisons matching their gender, citing the case of Isla Bryson, whom he referred to as "a person who identifies itself as a woman using its penis to rape two women". Both of these things were attributed by Žižek to wokeness (the wider subject of the article).
Other
Žižek wrote that the convention center in which nationalist Slovene writers hold their conventions should be blown up, adding, "Since we live in the time without any sense of irony, I must add I don't mean it literally."
In 2013, Žižek corresponded with imprisoned Russian activist and Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.
He criticized Western military interventions in developing countries and wrote that it was the 2011 military intervention in Libya "which threw the country in chaos" and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq "which created the conditions for the rise" of the Islamic State.
Žižek believes that
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
Chinese Communist Party
The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...
is the best protector of the interests of capitalists. From the
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...
to Deng's reforms, " Mao himself created the ideological condition for rapid capitalist development by tearing apart the fabric of traditional society."
In an opinion article for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'', Žižek argued in favour of giving full support to
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
in response to Russian aggression, later arguing that it would also be a tragedy for Ukraine to yoke itself to western neoliberalism. Commenting on the meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy in February 2025, he stated, "Ukrainians are being portrayed as if they could choose peace but instead decide to engage in a war that displaces a quarter of their population, just for the sake of a proxy war. But in reality, it’s a matter of their survival." He compared the struggle of Ukraine against its occupiers to the
Palestinians
Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine.
*: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenou ...
Gaza Strip
The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is a small territory located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; it is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories, the other being the West Bank, that make up the State of Palestine. I ...
, arguing that Israel's true goal, disguised under claims of eliminating
Hamas
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...
West Bank
The West Bank is located on the western bank of the Jordan River and is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip) that make up the State of Palestine. A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
.
Criticism and controversy
Inconsistency and ambiguity
Žižek's philosophical and political positions have been described as ambiguous, and his work has been criticized for a failure to take a consistent stance. While he has claimed to stand by a revolutionary Marxist project, his lack of vision concerning the possible circumstances which could lead to successful revolution makes it unclear what that project consists of. According to John Gray and John Holbo, his theoretical argument often lacks grounding in historical fact, which makes him more provocative than insightful.
In a very negative review of Žižek's book ''Less than Nothing'', John Gray attacked Žižek for his celebrations of violence, his failure to ground his theories in historical facts, and his 'formless radicalism' which, according to Gray, professes to be communist yet lacks the conviction that communism could ever be successfully realized. Gray concluded that Žižek's work, though entertaining, is intellectually worthless: "Achieving a deceptive substance by endlessly reiterating an essentially empty vision, Žižek's work amounts in the end to less than nothing."
Žižek's refusal to present an alternative vision has led critics to accuse him of using unsustainable Marxist categories of analysis and having a 19th-century understanding of class. For example, post-MarxistErnesto Laclau argued that "Žižek uses class as a sort of '' deus ex machina'' to play the role of the good guy against the multicultural devils."
In his book ''Living in the End Times'', Žižek suggests that the criticism of his positions is itself ambiguous and multilateral:
Stylistic confusion
Žižek has been criticized for his chaotic and non-systematic style: Harpham calls Žižek's style "a stream of nonconsecutive units arranged in arbitrary sequences that solicit a sporadic and discontinuous attention". O'Neill concurs: "a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance." Noam Chomsky deems Žižek guilty of "using fancy terms like polysyllables and pretending you have a theory when you have no theory whatsoever", adding that his views are often too obscure to be communicated usefully to common people.
Conservative thinker Roger Scruton claims that:
Careless scholarship
Žižek has been accused of approaching phenomena without rigour, reductively forcing them to support pre-given theoretical notions. For example, Tania Modleski alleges that "in trying to make Hitchcock 'fit' Lacan, he �ižekfrequently ends up simplifying what goes on in the films". Similarly, Yannis Stavrakakis criticises Žižek's reading of '' Antigone'', claiming it proceeds without regard for both the play itself and the interpretation, given by Lacan in his 7th
Seminar
A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some part ...
, which Žižek claims to follow. According to Stavrakakis, Žižek mistakenly characterises Antigone's act (illegally burying her brother) as politically radical/revolutionary, when in reality "Her act is a ''one-off'' and she couldn't care less about what will happen in the polis after her suicide."
Noah Horwitz alleges that Žižek (and the Ljubljana School to which Žižek belongs) mistakenly conflates the insights of Lacan and Hegel, and registers concern that such a move "risks transforming Lacanian psychoanalysis into a discourse of ''self-consciousness'' rather than a discourse on the psychoanalytic, Freudian ''unconscious''."
Allegations of plagiarism
Žižek's tendency to recycle portions of his own texts in subsequent works resulted in the accusation of self-plagiarism by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' in 2014, after Žižek published an
op-ed
An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...
in the magazine which contained portions of his writing from an earlier book. In response, Žižek expressed perplexity at the harsh tone of the denunciation, emphasizing that the recycled passages in question only acted as references from his theoretical books to supplement otherwise original writing.
In July 2014, ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...
'' reported that online bloggers led by Steve Sailer had discovered that in an article published in 2006, Žižek plagiarized long passages from an earlier review by Stanley Hornbeck that first appeared in the journal '' American Renaissance'', a publication condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the organ of a "white nationalist hate group". In response to the allegations, Žižek stated:
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''IEP'') is a scholarly online encyclopedia with around 900 articles about philosophy, philosophers, and related topics. The IEP publishes only peer review, peer-reviewed and blind-refereed original p ...
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...