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Slavoj Žižek Biography

Slavoj Žižek (/ˈslɑːvɔɪ ˈʒɪʒɛk/ ( listen) SLAH-voy ZHIZH-ek; Slovene: [ˈslaʋɔj ˈʒiʒɛk]; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian continental philosopher. He is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London. He works in subjects including continental philosophy, political theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, film criticism, Marxism, Hegelianism and theology.

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Slavoj Žižek Quotes

Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

Emergencies, Love, Misfortune, Monstrous, Ruins, Small Pleasures

We usually speak of the Jewish-Christian civilization - perhaps, the time has come, especially with regard to the Middle East conflict, to talk about the Jewish-Muslim civilization as an axis opposed to Christianity.

Axes, Axis, Christian, Civilization, East, Regard

Confucius was not so much a philsopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what one is tempted to call the elementary scene of ideology, its zero-level, which consists in asserting the (nameless) authority of some substantial Tradition.

Call, Firsts, Happy, Individuals, Order, Zero

Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence - by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present - but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word 'quarters' the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc. , as if they possessed self-sufficient being.

Absence, Absent, Autonomous, Color, Self, Tears

While just looking, we are always hunting among objects, looking for what we desire or fear, endeavoring to recognize some pattern; on the other hand, objects themselves always "stare back," vie for our attention, throw at us their lures and endeavor to entrap us.

Desire, Fear, Hands, Hunting, Objects, Recognize

This, then, is the truth of the discourse of universal human rights: the Wall separating those covered by the umbrella of Human Rights and those excluded from its protective cover. Any reference to universal human rights as an 'unfinished project' to be gradually extended to all people is here a vain ideological chimera - and, faced with this prospect, do we, in the West, have any right to condemn the excluded when they use any means, inclusive of terror, to fight their exclusion?

Fighting, Mean, Prospect, Reference, Universal, Wall

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Being Happy, Book, Children, Say, Vulgar, Way

In Fascism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed. Nobody had the idea of arresting Jews and torturing them to confess the Jewish plot. Because in Fascism, you are guilty for your whole being.

Guilty, Ideas, Jews, Plot, Simply, Torturing

Global capitalism is simply accepted as a fact that you cannot do anything about. The only question is, Will you accommodate yourself to it, or will you be dismissed and excluded?

Accepted, Capitalism, Excluded, Facts, Question, Simply

We need useless theory more than ever today.

Needs, Theory, Today, Useless

The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.

Goes On, Participate, Pseudo, Today, Urge

The duty of a politician for me is to be a representative: a politician is not an expert, experts are experts, hired for their expertise.

Duty, Expertise, Experts, Politician, Representative

If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.

If You Love Someone, Reason, Ifs, Love, Reasons

You can be a fanatical millennialist religious mystic, and you are, in a certain way, not outside of ideology. Your position can be that of perfectly describing the data and nonetheless your point is ideological.

Data, Millennialist, Perfectly, Religious, Way

Those who were still able to write beautiful melodies were kitsch composers like Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky approaches true art not in his numerous beautiful melodies, but when a melodic line is thwarted.

Art, Beautiful, Line, Melodic, True, Writing

The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, 'Better dead than red!' are now often heard mumbling, 'Better red than eating hamburgers.

Dead, Eating, Hamburgers, Red, Same

What if culture itself is nothing but a halt, a break, a respite, in the pursuit of barbarity?

Break, Culture, Halt, Pursuit, What If

For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.

Blacks, Deserve, Distance, Native, Native American, White

We should not oppose something just because it was appropriated by the wrong guys; rather, we should think about how to reappropriate it.

Guy, Guys, Reappropriate, Think, Thinking, Wrong Guy

A typical guy who buys organic food doesn't really buy it in order to be healthy; he buys it to regain a kind of solidarity as the one who really cares about nature. He buys a certain ideological stance.

Food, Guy, Healthy, Nature, Order

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