The eminent Slovenian philosopher and charismatic cultural critic Slavoj Zizek, known as the “wild man of theory,” will reveal the paradoxes that underlie our perceptions of reality when he speaks at Lebanon Valley College. Zizek’s talk, titled The Post Human, will be on Friday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. in LVC’s Miller Chapel. The public is welcome at no charge to hear him speak. His lectures are known to be “spellbinding” due to his electric, eccentric personality and his encyclopedic grasp of political, philosophical, literary, artistic, cinematic, and pop cultural currents. He comes across as revolutionary more than a theoretician. He will speak as part of LVC’s Wired Colloquium, which—in a yearlong series of lectures and presentations—examines how technology affects our lives.
Zizek is a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana and at the European Graduate School. He uses popular culture to explain the theory of the late French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, famous for his “return to Freud” in the mid 20th century and for expanding on Freud’s theories. Zizek utilizes Lacan’s theories as a lens for explaining politics and
Zizek was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he still lives, but he has lectured at universities around the world. He was psychoanalyzed by Jacques Alain Miller, Lacan’s son-in-law, and is probably the most successful and prolific post-Lacanian. Zizek has published over 50 books, which have been translated into a dozen languages and have been very influential among those studying cultural trends. Most of his works are moral and political rather than purely theoretical. He is a leftist and, aside from Lacan, he was strongly influenced by Marx, Hegel, and Schelling.
Politically active in Slovenia during the 1980s, he was a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Slovenia in 1990.