32. Slavoj Zizek

Slavoj Žižek (1949) is a Slovenian sociologist, philosopher and cultural critic.

Žižek is a professor at the European Graduate School and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York, the University of Minnesota and the University of Michigan. He is currently the International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at Birkbeck College.

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. In addition to his work as an interpreter of Lacanian psychoanalysis, he writes on countless topics, such as fundamentalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

In 1990 he was a candidate of LDS for president of the Republic of Slovenia. More recently, he caused a stir in the world of social theory by writing the text of a catalogue for Abercrombie & Fitch. He is widely regarded as a fiery and colorful lecturer who does not shy away from controversial remarks.