Slavoj Žižek. Object a and The Function of Ideology. 2012

‪www.egs.edu/ Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and author, talking about the structure of belief and the mediation of desire. In this lecture Slavoj Žižek discusses his polemic with Badiou on the notion of subtraction as a political and philosophical category, object a as cause of desire, the event, inconsistency in the symbolic order and the function of the master signifier in relationship to Jacques Lacan, Alain Badiou, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Jacques Rancière and Charles Darwin focusing on singular universality, the supernumerary element, Zapatistas, evolution, minimal difference, the point, ecology, nature, love, and generic sets. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe. 2012. Slavoj Žižek.
Slavoj Žižek, Ph.D., (born March 21, 1949), is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a returning faculty member of the European Graduate School. He has also been a visiting professor at a number of American Universities (Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York University, University of Michigan). Slavoj Žižek recieved his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He also studied at the University of Paris. Slavoj Žižek is a cultural critic, philosopher and film theorist who is internationally known for his innovative interpretations of Hegel, Marx and Jacques Lacan. Slavoj Žižek has been called the 'Elvis Presley' of philosophy as well as an 'academic rock star.'
Slavoj Žižek is the author of The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), For They Know Not What They Do (1991), Looking Awry: an Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture (1991), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid To Ask Hitchcock) (1992), Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan In Hollywood And Out (1992), Tarrying With The Negative (1993), Mapping Ideology (1994), The Indivisible Remainder (1996), The Plague of Fantasies (1997), The Abyss Of Freedom (1997), The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology (1999), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau) (2000), The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, On David Lynch's Lost Highway (2000), The Fragile Absolute or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For (2000), On Belief (2001), The Fright of Real Tears (2001), Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? (2001), The Puppet and the Dwarf (2003), Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequences (2003), Iraq The Borrowed Kettle (2004) Violence (2008), First As Tragedy, Then As Farce (2009), Living in the End Times (2010), Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (2012), and most recently, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (2012).

[@CC3GROUNDZERO]

This is my favorite EGS lecture of Zizek.

[@isidoor2]

too bad: an intelligent and crucial question about René Girard (58'50). Zizek postponed and forgot to answer.

[@shimadamada9646]

A funny fact: Slovenia is one of top countries by cigarettes smoked per capita :)