September 12, 2003

Cultural Theorist Starts New Series at MIT Press

By SCOTT MCLEMEE

THE ZIZEK ZIGZAG: Slavoj Zizek may have the strongest "brand identity" (as the advertisers say) of any cultural theorist now in the marketplace of ideas. Scholarly journals are full of cheap knockoffs of Gayatri Spivak and Fredric Jameson. But no one can quite imitate Mr. Zizek, with his virtuoso maneuvering among references to Lacanian psychoanalysis, German philosophy, Hollywood blockbusters, and the history of Marxism-Leninism -- all interspersed with jokes, some of them obscene. His