How Slavoj Became Zizek

"Slovenian philosopher bad boy Slavoj éZiézek is one of the most famous intellectuals in the world. He publishes at a breakneck speed and lectures around the world. He has an unmistakable speaking style and set of mannerisms that have made him ripe material for internet humor and meme culture. YouTube clips of his talks, interviews, and media appearances often have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of views. How did an intellectual from a remote Eastern European country come to such notoriety? In this book, sociologist Eliran Bar-El plumbs the "phenomenon called 'éZiézek'"; its origin, emergence, and development over the years. He begins with éZiézek's early years as a thinker and political figure in Slovenian civil society. There, éZiézek became a philosopher, immersed himself in Marxist debates both within academia as well as in activist circles, and even ran for office. Bar-El then turns to éZiézek's emergence in the English-speaking world as an intellectual celebrity in the 1990s and the development and perfection of his unique performative style and rhetorical arsenal (éZiézek's language of "Hegelacanese"). Post 9/11, éZiézek goes global, becoming a well-known op-ed writer and TV commentator on pop culture and large-scale global events such as the War on Terror, the financial crisis of 2008, and the Arab Spring of 2011. Things took a turn when éZiézek was almost entirely estranged from the normal workings of academia and increasingly became the target of other of other thinkers-Noam Chomsky, notably-who singled him out as an example of intellectual imposture, as well as others outraged by the non-politically correct views he professes. Ultimately, Bar-El shows how éZiézek harnessed the power of the digital era in his own self-fashioning as an intellectual, remaking and capitalizing on the shifting intellectual landscape and what Bar-El calls our "knowledge societies." Throughout the book, Bar-El shows how éZiézek has navigated different audiences and publics, developing a hybrid language capable of speaking to specialists and laypeople alike, using globally traumatic events as the subject of his often irreverent analyses, combining high and low registers, and flaunting his own lack of expertise and specialization and his "outsider" status as a way to form a substantial extra-academic public and to engage with current events"--