To the academic world’s small population of postmodernists, Slavoj Zizek – a shambling, rambling Slovenian philosopher – is a folk hero. At any lecture podium, any time, anywhere, he will emit hazy clouds of gaseous theory with the speedy intensity and comic riffs of Bill Hicks.
He seemed to emerge fully formed from the wreckage of the former Yugoslavia with an ec lectic magpie-philosophy, rapidly spewing out books and essays on everything from opera to the use of torture in the TV series 24. Zizek is the biggest box-office draw postmodernists have ever had, their best punch at the bestseller lists. The press fawns upon him; he has been called an “intellectual rock star”; and, according to a recent profile in the New Yorker, Slovenia has a “repu tation disproportionately large for its size due to the work of Slavoj Zizek”.
more from The New Statesman here.