Žižek and the “return” of negativity

Abstract

If we do not already recognize in Slavoj Žižek the Sartrean “universal intellectual” or the Foucaultian “specific”, or the Gramscian “organic” or the autonomist militant suspicious of any theoretical avant-garde, ¿who exactly is he? ¿Someone who occupies, in our contemporary society, a certain position of “analyst” unleashing operations of “transference”, inviting to “cross over the ghosts”? ¿But isn't this “enfant terrible”, due to his popularity, the current philosopher who, in spite of his invectives against post-modernity, has better known how to adapt to the post-modern ecosystem? In this article we will try to analyze the meaning of his figure in the light of a diagnosis about what the twentieth century still means for us.