Politics Between Fear and Terror

Guest Speaker: Slavoj Zizek, Professor Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana Date: November 15th, 2006 Time: Length: 2:00:00 Location: Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall, UCSD [webcast] Host: Visual Arts Department

DESCRIPTION/ABSTRACT: Slavoj Zizek, one of the most famous contemporary philosophers in the world, will speak at this public event to an expected overflow crowd. His talk is funded by Calit2 at UCSD and the Visual Arts Department, and will be webcast live over the Internet in streaming Real video. SPEAKER BIO: Slavoj Zizek is a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana, and at the European Graduate School EGS, who uses popular culture to explain the theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Jacques Lacan to explain politics and popular culture. He was born in 1949 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he lives to this day but he has lectured at universities around the world. He was analysed by Jacques Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan's son in law, and is probably the most successful and prolific post-Lacanian, having published over fifty books including translations into a dozen languages. Aside from Lacan he was strongly influenced by Marx, Hegel and Schelling. In temperament, he resembles a revolutionist more than a theoretician. He was politically active in Slovenia during the 80s, a candidate for the presidency of the Republic of Slovenia in 1990; most of his works are moral and political rather than purely theoretical. He has considerable energy and charisma and is a spellbinding lecturer in the tradition of Lacan and Kojeve. Zizek was a visiting professor at the Department of Psychoanalysis, Universite Paris-VIII in 1982-3 and 1985-6, at the Centre for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Art, SUNY Buffalo, 1991-2, at the Department of Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1992, at the Tulane University, New Orleans, 1993, at the Cardozo Law School, New York, 1994, at the Columbia University, New York, 1995, at the Princeton University (1996), at the New School for Social Research, New York, 1997, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1998, and at the Georgetown University, Washington, 1999. He is a returning faculty member of the European Graduate School. In the last 20 years Zizek has participated in over 350 international philosophical, psychoanalytical and cultural-criticism symposiums in USA, France, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Netherland, Island, Austria, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Brasil, Mexico, Israel, Romania, Hungary and Japan. He is the founder and president of the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, Ljubljana. Zizek's most recent book is The Parallax View (Short Circuits, 2006).