Slavoj Zizek

Fascism vs Communism

Slavoj Zizek, psychoanalyst and dialectical materialist philosopher extraordinaire, "senior researcher" at the University of Ljubljana, plays the intellectual's favorite parlor game: which was the more malign force in the last century, fascism or communism? After about half a second's thought, I'd go with communism (which, as it turns out, is the wrong answer), but that's neither here nor there. The aphorist Lec: "In a war of ideas, it is people who get killed".

I watched Zizek speak once at the U of C. You heard right, watched, not heard, for a Theorist is first and foremost a spectacle. The hall was packed with people in strange and somber raiment, for each of whom there was only one other person in the world, the master Zizek, who shuffled around the podium, beetle-browed and bushy-bearded, secure in the knowledge that he could say nothing wrong. Sadly he had a head cold, and drew a colorful handkerchief from his coat at well-chosen intervals, and picked his nose flamboyantly. I learned something that day, the answer to a question I had long pondered: what is a Theorist?

Someone who picks his nose flamboyantly.