Slavoj Žižek is not a representative of Anglo-American postmodernism. He is neither American, British, Canadian, nor Australian. Žižek is Slovenian, though he has written and spoken primarily in English since the 1990s. Alongside English, he is fluent in his native Slovenian and German. Despite his Eastern European roots, Žižek remains a prominent figure in the discussions of Anglo-American postmodernism. In fact, we kicked off our series on postmodernists with a debate between Žižek and Jordan Peterson. The Slovenian philosopher has garnered remarkable popularity, not only in philosophy, social theory, and psychoanalysis but also in popular media. Through his numerous books (which we won’t attempt to list), articles, interviews, public appearances, lectures, and documentaries, Žižek has crafted a distinctive public persona.
Žižek is a philosopher with a paradoxical approach to thinking. Known for his deep analysis of popular culture, he’s been dubbed the “Elvis of philosophy,” while others liken him to Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean—the most hopeless of pirates. His response to this comparison? “Yes, but you’ve heard of me!” His speaking style is far from straightforward; it’s often ambiguous, cynical, and provocative, which makes him a truly critical philosopher. While some critics dismiss him as a fool, clown, or even an ignoramus, his wide recognition among the public speaks volumes. He has a rare ability to make complex ideas accessible, earning him a large and devoted following.
In his analysis of contemporary mass culture, Žižek goes further than Fredric Jameson, who primarily focused on high culture. Reading Žižek can be challenging, as the logic in his texts is often elusive. For those delving into his work, a simple piece of advice: read him through to the end, as the key points can easily be missed otherwise. To avoid feeling lost, it’s often helpful to reread his texts—because, in truth, there’s no fragmentation in his work.
Slovenian cultural theorist, social philosopher, and Freudo-Marxist Slavoj Žižek, born in Ljubljana in 1949, is regarded as one of the founders of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis. Although his roots lie in Eastern Europe, it’s crucial to situate his legacy within the broader Western Anglophone tradition. Notably, despite his leftist views, Žižek stands in stark contrast to some right-wing figures in his strong support for Ukraine.
The theme of postmodernism, which has long preoccupied critical philosophers, is one Žižek has also tackled. He argues that we live in a society of risk, a concept defined by German sociologist Ulrich Beck and British sociologist Anthony Giddens. In this post-industrial, post-ideological world, Žižek engages deeply with postmodernist ideas, drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Marxist critiques of political economy, and dialectical Hegelianism. Through these frameworks, he seeks to expose what he sees as the twisted core of relativistic and paranoid cynicism inherent in postmodernism. Žižek characterizes postmodernism as the “negation of the negation,” a rejection of universality, and the “collapse of the authority of the big Other.” By analyzing the subject as a space of fantasy and fetishism, he critiques postmodernism for shaping the subject of desire in late capitalism into a libidinal support for the (post-ideological) state apparatus, one that demands constant pleasure.
In his book The Zigzag View, Žižek argues that the “postmodernist” break doesn’t originate with Derrida, Foucault, or Deleuze, but with Jacques Lacan. According to Žižek, Lacan introduces a real, traumatic core to his theories, the status of which remains deeply ambivalent: the real resists symbolization, yet at the same time, it is its own retroactive product. In The Sublime Subject of Ideology (1989), Žižek places deconstructivists among structuralists and considers Lacan the only true poststructuralist. Unlike some thinkers who reduce the opposition between modernism and postmodernism to a simple chronological divide, Žižek insists that, paradoxically, postmodernism precedes modernism in a logical, rather than temporal, sense. In any case, Žižek argues for a radical break with all forms of deconstructivist, post-Nietzschean, and post-Heideggerian philosophy. He rejects postmodernism and poststructuralism, believing them to be, at their core, either secretly religious or anti-philosophical. In a broader sense, Žižek’s work aligns him with theorists of the Frankfurt School—though the comparison isn’t perfect, as he surprisingly considers Jürgen Habermas a postmodernist—and his focus remains on capitalism, revolutionary politics, and psychoanalysis.
“Far more interesting than the question of what from Marx remains alive today, or what Marx still means to us, is the question of what the present world means in Marx’s eyes,” Žižek says in The Metastases of Enjoyment (1994).
Žižek is also a steadfast critic of contemporary Marxism and Neo-Marxism. It’s crucial to highlight that, unlike the failed attempts by figures like Peterson, Žižek offers this critique from within the Marxist tradition, not from the outside. In 2008, Swedish sociologist Göran Therborn observed in his book From Marxism to Post-Marxism? that while Marxism faced political defeat, its creative energy remained undiminished. In the early 2000s, several uncompromising discourses rooted in Marxist heritage began to emerge. Among these was Žižek’s work, which aligns him with practitioners of Western Marxism, as he interprets and applies Marx through the lenses of other major European traditions: Lacanian psychoanalysis and a wide array of philosophical systems, with Heidegger at their core.
In his Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction (2004), Ian Parker outlines three key motivations that drove Žižek to engage with the Marxist tradition. The first motivation revolves around his development of a theory of ideology within the context of Marxist debates in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Žižek stirred the emotions of post-Marxists by challenging the established ideas about class struggle and advancing the left-wing debate on analyzing subjectivity as an ideological process. This analysis is central to Žižek’s first English-language book, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), which was published as part of a British post-Marxist series where the left’s agenda was reinterpreted from the perspective of “radical and pluralistic democracy.” This book remains one of his finest works, alongside his readings of Marx and Freud on subjects like consumption and desire.
The second motivation behind Žižek’s work is his broader engagement with Marxism. This can be seen as his attempt to reconstruct something radical in Marxist thought from the remnants of Eastern European Stalinism. In this context, Žižek speaks to those attempting to revive revolutionary Marxism. Given the ambiguous intellectual legacy of Lenin, which he references, Žižek argues that what is needed today—rather than the old Marxist debate between private property and nationalisation—is a complete rethinking of the political. The third motivation involves Žižek’s ability to characterize different forms of political organisation, where Hegelian and Lacanian concepts are applied to understand the political. At this point, Žižek largely distances himself from revolutionary Marxism, as it has drifted towards non-Marxist ultra-left positions. And, as we know, the transition from ultra-left to ultra-right can happen swiftly.
Žižek argues that Marx should still be read, but what we truly need today is not a straightforward reading of his texts, but an imaginative one. It’s about exploring how Marx would respond to new theories that seek to replace Marxism, which is often considered outdated. Even during the Occupy Wall Street movement, Žižek criticised the left for its tendency toward narcissism and its admiration for the lofty ideals of uprisings that are ultimately doomed to fail. For Žižek, the left must address the crucial question: what new society should replace the old one once the initial enthusiasm fades? He believes the left needs to move beyond a politics of resistance, which focuses solely on “what should we reject?” (what else should we emancipate from?), and towards a politics that creates new possibilities beyond the current system. He also criticises those on the left who spend more time protesting than actually developing concrete political projects.
Žižek points out that today, we don’t feel a lack of anti-capitalism; in fact, we’re bombarded with an overwhelming amount of criticism of capitalism’s horrors. We read about it in books, newspapers, and investigative reports, see it in TV coverage of companies polluting the environment, and hear about greedy officials who continue to receive enormous compensation while ordinary people can’t afford basic necessities. But within all this criticism, Žižek argues, something crucial is overlooked: what remains unquestioned is the fact that, no matter how harsh the critique appears, it operates within the democratic-liberal framework that aims to tackle capitalism’s excesses. Essentially, the goal of this criticism is not to dismantle capitalism, but to democratise it, advocating for increased democratic control over the economy through media pressure, parliamentary investigations, stricter laws, and more honest police inquiries. However, the very democratic-institutional framework of the bourgeois state remains unchallenged. It stays the “sacred cow,” even for the most radical forms of so-called ethical anti-capitalism. For Žižek, true radical change always occurs beyond the boundaries of the legitimate rights established within such a framework.
Žižek challenges us to recognise that democratic procedures are part of the state apparatus within the “bourgeois” system, which ensures the smooth functioning of capitalist production. He argues that the “democratic illusion” — the belief that democratic mechanisms are the ultimate framework for any kind of meaningful change — obstructs true radical transformation in capitalist relations. For Žižek, there is still the possibility of a radical political alternative to the current model of liberal, capitalist, and multicultural democracy that dominates the West. While Žižek’s research departs from certain contradictions within Marxist theory, he maintains that if you take Marxism seriously as a theory and practice of collective struggle against contemporary capitalism, the Slovenian philosopher may prove to be more of an obstacle than an asset in that political program. When it comes to postmodernism, Žižek views the “bourgeois” United States as a miniature version of postmodern multiculturalism, where the global market and legal system act less as a melting pot and more as a centre for the endless proliferation of private group identities.
