Quote

A spectre is haunting Western academia (...), the spectre of the Cartesian subject.

Slavoj Žižek

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Slavoj Žižek
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: March 21
Cultural Critic
Cultural Studies Scholar
Essayist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
Theologian
Ljubljana
Slovenia
Slavoj Zizek
Subjects
Cartesian
Spectre
Academia
Haunting
Western
Subject

More quotes by Slavoj Žižek

Image
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.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
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.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
Love is what makes sex more than masturbation. If there is no love even if you are really with a partner you masturbate with a partner.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
What if the Soviet intervention was a blessing in disguise? It saved the myth that if the Soviets were not to intervene, there would have been some flowering authentic democratic socialism and so on. I'm a little bit more of a pessimist there. I think that the Soviets - it's a very sad lesson - by their intervention, saved the myth.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
What we philosophers can do is just correct the questions.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
There is an old joke about socialism as the synthesis of the highest achievements of the whole human history to date: from prehistoric societies it took primitivism from the Ancient world it took slavery from medieval society brutal domination from capitalism exploitation and from socialism the name.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
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.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
In the electoral campaign, President Bush named as the most important person in his life Jesus . Now he has a unique chance to prove that he meant it seriously: for him, as for all Americans today, Love thy neighbor! means Love the Muslims! OR IT MEANS NOTHING AT ALL.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The fantasy which serves as a support for the figure of the Stalinist Communist is therefore exactly the same as the fantasy which is at work in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
It's bad if we are controlled, but if we're not, it can be even worse.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
We should not oppose something just because it was appropriated by the wrong guys rather, we should think about how to reappropriate it.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
In Stalinism, everybody was potentially a victim in a totally contingent way.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
I am what you might call abstractly anti-capitalist. For instance, I am suspicious of the old leftists who focus all their hatred on the United States. What about Chinese neo-colonialism? Why are the left silent about that? When I say this, it annoys them, of course. Good!
Slavoj Žižek
Image
But in a radically atheist universe, you are not only responsible for doing your duty, You are also responsible for deciding what is your duty.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
I may still be a kind of a Marxist but I'm very realistic, I don't have these dreams of revolutionists around the corner.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: Don't think, don't politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!
Slavoj Žižek
Image
I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.
Slavoj Žižek