Biography of Slavoj Zizek

1901

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic.

He grew up in the comparative cultural freedom of the former Yugoslavia’s self managing socialism. Here – significantly for his work – Zizek was exposed to the films, popular culture and theory of the noncommunist West.

Since 1979, Zizek has been a researcher at the University of Ljubljana (Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, from 1992 Institute for Social Sciences, Faculty for Social Sciences).

In the late 1980s, Zizek returned to Slovenia where he wrote newspaper columns for the Slovenian weekly “Mladina”, and cofounded the Slovenian Liberal Democratic Party.

Žižek is currently a professor in European Graduate School and a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology in the University of Ljubljiana.

Politically active in the alternative movement in Slovenia during the 80s; Ambassador of Science of the Republic of Slovenia (1991).

Zizek was a visiting professor at the Department of Psychoanalysis, Universite Paris-VIII in 1982-3 and 1985-6, at the Centre for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Art, SUNY Buffalo, 1991-2, at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1992, at the Tulane University, New Orleans, 1993, at the Cardozo Law School, New York, 1994, at the Columbia University, New York, 1995, at the Princeton University (1996), at the New School for Social Research, New York, 1997, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1998, and at the Georgetown University, Washington, 1999.

He is currently a returning faculty member of the European Graduate School.

In the last 20 years Zizek has participated in over 350 international philosophical, psychoanalytical and cultural-criticism symposiums in USA, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Netherland, Island, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Brasil, Mexico, Israel, Romania, Hungary and Japan.

He is the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana.

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj ZiZek has gained something of a cult following for his many writings. Slavoj Zizek, a philosopher and a (Lacanian) psychoanalyst, is international director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Birkbeck. The Parallax View, his latest attempt to rehabilitate dialectical materialism, comes out in April 2006.

Bibliography

Zizek’s first published book in English The Sublime Object of Ideology appeared in 1989. Editor of the following book series: Analecta (in Slovene), Wo es war (in German), Wo es war (with Verso) and SIC (with Duke UP) in English.

Since then, Zizek has published over a dozen books, edited several collections, published numerous philosophical and political articles, and maintained a tireless speaking schedule.

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Žižek was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia). He received a D.A. in philosophy from the University of Ljubljana, then studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris. In 1990 he was a presidential candidate for the "Liberal Democracy of Slovenia" (Liberalna Demokracija Slovenije). Žižek is currently a professor in European Graduate School and a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology in the University of Ljubljiana. Žižek has occupied positions at many universities, particularly in the United States, including Columbia, University of Princeton, New for School Social Research and New York, University of Michigan among others. Žižek is well-known for his employing Lacanian psychoanalytic theory in his readings of popular culture (from the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, to the literature of Kafka or Shakespeare). In addition, he writes on a great range of topics, such as fundamentalism, tolerance, multiculturalism, political correctness, globalization, human rights, political subjectivity, cyberspace, post-modernism, Leninism, etc.