How Slavoj Became Žižek

In this extremely successful study, Bar-El traces Z iz ek's appeal over the past thirty years to a worldwide audience. Based on substantial research into Z iz ek's own work and that of his closest associates, interviews with Z iz ek, and interactions with Z iz ek's followers across the world, How Slavoj Became Z iz ek shows how Z iz ek has navigated vertiginously between a host of other contemporary theorists and political positions in the formulation and presentation of his own interventions and become famous-or infamous-almost from the inception of his career. -- William Outhwaite, Newcastle University This fascinating and provocative study of the Slovenian celebrity intellectual Slavoj Z iz ek takes as its epigram Hegel's thesis that 'the particular is trifling as compared with the general.' Sociologist Bar-El's book upends this precept, constructing from a detailed examination of the career of one very particular contemporary social thinker and cultural critic a wide-ranging analysis of the complex transformations of intellectual life that are now occurring on a global scale because of the growth of a 'digital public sphere.' Thoroughly researched and informed by recent sociological theories of knowledge production, the book is indispensable for understanding the social positioning and performative practices of public intellectuals in contemporary societies. -- Charles Camic, Northwestern University