Casting Žižek:
Manliness as a Masquerade
We will look at the gap between representation and meaning in two recent films about the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalytical film theorist Slavoj Žižek: “Žižek!,” 2005, by Astra Taylor, and “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema,” 2006, by Sophie Fiennes. Both semi-documentaries feature Žižek as the main protagonist.
He “acts out” his addiction to analyse everything: films, jokes, communism, male/female relationships, “even homosexuals if you like.” Absolutely everything is submitted to his psychoanalytical magnifying glass that enlarges the hidden mechanisms of human desire in order to “make the things clear.”
However, we want to argue that if Žižek is read with the “white, male, ex-Yugoslav and (ex-) Balkan Žižek” there are many inconsistencies and slips to be found in his own arguments.
The deconstruction of Žižek’s statements is a methodological detour to the testimonial narrative of “Žižek the man-author” as we knew him in our ex-Yugoslav (and Balkan) context.
It is an attempt to read the discourse that holds the position of “imperial” authority endowed by the global centers of academic power in the humanities by applying the politics of location shared by both presenters and Slavoj Žižek, who inefficiently tries to distance himself from it.
In addition a collage of his writing and visual documentation of his public and political actions will demonstrate that not only is his body stripped off clothes but also his ideas are stripped off any ethical refinement while hijacking the feminist discourse.
If womanliness in Joan Riviere’s terms could be assumed and worn as a mask “both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it“ one could ask: is not the over-exposed manliness of the renowned philosopher conceptualised as a mask/epitome of the “real” Balkan manliness?
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