Slavoj Zizek, arguably the world’s most prominent living philosopher and cultural theorist, will come to the University of Chicago to present the 2008 Romberg Lecture titled “The Spectrality of the Real: A Lacanian Approach” on Friday, March 7 at 7:30 p.m. in Social Sciences 122.
Known for his belligerent, revolutionist style, his polymathic range - he writes on countless topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock - Zizek has divided opinion within the academy, and developed a cultish following.
“He is the single most important living philosopher working at the intersection of the German Idealist philosophical tradition, political theory, and psychoanalytic theory,” said Eric Santner, the Philip and Ida Romberg Professor in Modern Germanic Studies, and Chair of the University’s Department of Germanic Studies. “What makes his work rather unique is the way he is able to make use of popular culture, jokes, everyday experience, along with analyses of dense philosophical texts, in order to shed light on contemporary political crises.”
A professor at the Institute for Sociology in Ljubljana, Slovenia, who has been a visiting professor at numerous universities in the United States and Europe, Zizek talk about the work of French philosopher Jacques Lacan during his lecture. Zizek is renownedfor his use of popular culture to explain the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan to explain politics and popular culture. In the last 20 years, Zizek has participated in over 350 international philosophical, psychoanalytical and cultural-criticism symposiums. He is the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana, and he has published more than 50 books, including translations into a dozen languages.
The lecture on Friday, March 7, will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Social Sciences 122.
Watch clips of Slavoj Zizek on YouTube.
