Slavoj Zizek: Lacan’s four discourses and the real

Slavoj Zizek, Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic, talking about the theoretical richness of Lacan’s four discourses: the master’s discourse, the hysteric’s discourse, the university discourse, and the analyst’s discourse. What follows is a prolonged discussion of the various guises of the object small a in its imaginary, symbolic and real forms and its relevance for contemporary ideology critique. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe 2014 Slavoj Zizek.



Slavoj Žižek was born into a family of average wealth, his father Jože Žižek grew up in eastern Slovenia and worked in economics. Slavoj Žižek's mother Vesna was an accountant. It was in Ljubljana, the capital of modern day Slovenia, that Vesna gave birth to Slavoj on March 21, 1949. Both of Slavoj Žižek's parents were atheists. Most of young Slavoj's childhood took place in Portorož, a small seaside community. Slavoj Žižek states in an interview with Helen Brown of the Telegraph, "at 15, I wanted to be a movie director. But I saw some really good European films and I accepted that I couldn’t do that. Then, at 17, I decided to become a philosopher." When Slavoj Žižek became a teenager the family returned to Ljubljana where he attended Bežigrad High School. Slavoj Žižek when to the University of Ljubljana in 1967 to study sociology and philosophy, receiving a Doctorate in the Arts in Philosophy. During this period in what was then Yugoslavia was a tumultuous political environment. It was at this time that the Communist regime began a series of liberalization policies. Later Slavoj Žižek went on to study psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with François Regnault and Jacques-Alain Miller (Jacques Lacan’s son-in-law).

Reading Žižek – Where to Start?