Urban Politics Now: Re-Imagining Democracy in the Neoliberal City. Reflect Series No. 6

by Slavoj Žižek (Contributor), Neil Smith, Juliet MacCannell

In "Urban Politics Now," the Rotterdam-based "architect philosophers" Gideon Boie and Matthias Pauwels--otherwise known as The BAVO Bureau for Architectural Theory--issue a challenge to sociologists, social geographers, philosophers, urban planners and architects, asking, "What ails contemporary urban politics?" Boie and Pauwels involve a few global heavy-hitters whose lengthy, hyphenated titles signal their engagement with multiple disciplines, like Slovenian-born philosopher, sociologist and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek--who, a few years ago, wrote some Lacanian-style copy for an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue to accompany Bruce Weber's mildly salacious photographs--and New York's Neil Smith, who trained as a geographer and now teaches urban, cultural and environmental anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Having stated as part of their mission that, "It is only by conceiving architecture as a symptom that its potential to make a difference in society can be assessed and/or enhanced," BAVO asks here if democratic urban politics are possible in the contemporary climate--with neoliberals and neoconservatives on the rise, environmental concerns on everyone's mind and an eruption of increasingly heated cultural differences plaguing every city in the world. If the symptoms of such ills are violence, socioeconomic disparities and hedonistic consumerism, what are the cures? An ability to reconfigure familiar disciplines seems a good start.

Genres: Architecture, Cities

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.

He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).

Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."