How do you feel about Slavoj Zizek?

He is the man. Especially his views on 9/11. I thought I was the only one who has heard of him. Where did you hear about him, Wakeup?

And no, it is not conspiratorial. Here is an excerpt from that article:
Or, America will finally risk stepping through the fantasmatic screen separating it from the Outside World, accepting its arrival into the Real World, making the long-overdued move from “A thing like this should not happen HERE!” to “A thing like this should not happen ANYWHERE!”. America’s “holiday from history” was a fake: America’s peace was bought by the catastrophes going on elsewhere. Therein resides the true lesson of the bombings: the only way to ensure that it will not happen HERE again is to prevent it going on ANYWHERE ELSE.

I’d like to think that I’m pretty intelligent, but I read Zizek in large part because he makes me feel idiotic by comparison.

Zizek has many gifts, one of which is turning over every rock and log along well-worn philosophical paths and finding something new. He looks at topics from as-yet-unconceived angles, and often, his books are thick with intellectual revelation on what feels like every other page (as is true in the Parallax View, for example). And of course he’ll mix in the obscure pop-culture reference or obscene joke to keep things fresh.

From a political standpoint, Zizek is a Communist, and an unapologetic one at that. This is desirable in a healthy society in that radical viewpoints (at least on the Far Left) move a society forward and prevent ideological stagnation.

Almost as important is his status as an “academic rockstar.” People need to see an edgy academic with a personality. Agree with him or not, his visibility is good for philosophy and academia.

He makes me what to be an academic, and a philosopher.

I highly recommend Zizek!, a documentary about the philosopher. It should be available on Youtube, in playlist form.