Slavoj ?i?ek is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural critic, a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. He writes widely on a diverse range of topics, including political theory, film theory, cultural studies, theology, and psychoanalysis. ?i?ek achieved international recognition as a social theorist after the 1989 publication of his first book in English, The Sublime Object of Ideology, which disputed a Marxist interpretation of ideology as false consciousness and argued for ideology as an unconscious fantasy that structures reality. ?i?ek considers himself a political radical and critic of neoliberalism. His political thought represents one of two paths of a progressive alternative?either a return to the program of socialism, which ?i?ek and Alain Badiou advocate, or the proposal of an alternative vision of social arrangements, which is taken up by contemporaries such as Roberto Mangabeira Unger. 

March 21st, 1949 in Ljubljana (Age 75)