Slavoj Zizek
Slavoj Žižek (Slovene pronunciation: [ˈslavoj ˈʒiʒɛk] ( listen); born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, and cultural critic, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He writes widely on a diverse range of topics, including political theory, film theory, cultural studies, theology, and psychoanalysis. Žižek achieved international recognition as a social theorist after the 1989 publication of his first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, which disputed a Marxist interpretation of ideology as false consciousness and argued for ideology as an unconscious fantasy that structures reality. Žižek considers himself a political radical and critic of neoliberalism. His political thought represents one of two paths of a progressive alternative—either a return to the program of socialism, which Žižek and Alain Badiou advocate, or the proposal of an alternative vision of social arrangements, which is taken up by contemporaries such as Roberto Mangabeira Unger. His unorthodox style, frequent newspaper op-eds, and popular academic books have gained Žižek a wide following and international influence. He has been labelled by some the "Elvis of cultural theory" and Foreign Policy listed him on its 2012 list of Top 100 Global Thinkers, calling him "a celebrity philosopher." Žižek's work was chronicled in a 2005 documentary film entitled Zizek! A scholarly journal, the International Journal of Žižek Studies, was also founded to engage his work.