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CANCELLED: Like a Thief in the Night - A Masterclass with Slavoj Zizek

When: —
Venue: Birkbeck Clore Management Centre

No booking required

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO THE STRIKE AT UK UNIVERSITIES.

Speaker: Slavoj Žižek, International Director, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

How will a radical social transformation happen? Definitely not as a triumphant victory or even as the catastrophe widely debated and predicted in the media but 'like a thief in the night': 'For you know very well that the day of the Lord will come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. While people are saying 'Peace and security', destruction will come upon them suddenly, like labour pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.'(Paul, 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3) Is this not already happening in our societies obsessed with, precisely, 'peace and security'? The three classes will explore the modalities of this unexpected rise of the new, from post-human forms of social life to digitalization of our social space.

The Masterclass will be spread over three sessions:

  1. Towards Post-Human Capitalism - Wednesday 7 March, 2-4pm
  2. Navigating in Uncharted Territories - Thursday 8 March, 2-4pm
  3. A Question of Manners - Friday 9 March, 2-4pm

You are welcome to join us for one or all of the sessions.

  • Standard tickets: £10 per session
  • Students and unwaged: Free
  • Birkbeck Staff: Free

BOOK YOUR PLACE

Suggested reading: Slavoj Žižek, Incontinence of the Void (MIT Press 2017), Part II

World-renowned public intellectual Professor Slavoj Zizek has published over 50 books (translated into 20 languages) on topics ranging from philosophy and Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, to theology, film, opera and politics, including Lacan in Hollywood and The Fragile Absolute. He was a candidate for, and nearly won, the Presidency of his native Slovenia in the first democratic elections after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990. Although courted by many universities in the US, he resisted offers until the International Directorship of Birkbeck's Centre came up. Believing that 'Political issues are too serious to be left only to politicians', Zizek aims to promote the role of the public intellectual, to be intellectually active and to address the larger public.

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