Slavoj Žižek

University of Ljubljana

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Department of Philosophy.

Speaking at the conference

Thursday, 22 September, 7pm, Linhart Hall

Whose Servant is a Master?

Friedrich the Great defined himself (the king) as “the first servant of State”, and this is how, from the early Enlightenment onwards, a master justifies his rule: he is in reality the greatest servant, the servant of all his subjects/servants. As expected, this false humility can justify the most brutal terror – Stalin fully belongs to this space. But there are different modalities of this position of “serving the servants”, from technocracy and religious fundamentalism to obscene master-clown, or even, as Mao Ze Dong can be characterized, to a “Lord of Misrule”, a master who periodically organizes rebellions against his own rule.

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