Clown Prince of the Revolution: On Slavoj Žižek, a new kind of leftist thinker

  • Roger Scruton University of Oxford, UK
  • Jorge Roaro Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2512310
Keywords: Marxism, Revolution, Lacan, Big Other, Democracy, Populism, Psychoanalysis

Abstract

This writing aims to analyze the basic premises of Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s ideological discourse, with its peculiar combination of Marxism, irony, revolutionary ideology, anti-system demagoguery, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, to critically look at its premises and foundations, while trying to find an explanation for the popularity of Žižek in western universities today, and the ease with which it is currently accepted by so many academics with hardly a minimum critical questioning.

Author Biographies

Roger Scruton, University of Oxford, UK

Roger Scruton is a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and University of Buckingham,
United Kingdom. PhD in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His main interests are in aesthetics,
philosophy of music and political philosophy. Has published books as Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford
University Press, 2011); The Face of God (Continuum, 2012); The Soul of the World (Princeton University Press,
2014); Music as an Art (Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018).

Jorge Roaro, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Jorge Roaro is a Researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. PhD in Philosophy at the
Universidad de Salamanca, Spain. His main interests are in the Spanish Renaissance humanism, the humanist
critique of culture, philosophy and art history, language philosophy, the relationship between literature and
philosophy, reflection on the philosophical problem of war, and dinosaurs. Co-editor of Disputatio.

Published
2017-12-22
How to Cite
[1]
Scruton, R. and Roaro, J. 2017. Clown Prince of the Revolution: On Slavoj Žižek, a new kind of leftist thinker. Disputatio. 6, 7 (Dec. 2017), 593-609. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2512310.
Issue
Vol. 6 No. 7 (2017)
Section
Articles and Essays

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