Portrait of Slavoj Žižek

Birthday profile

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian sociologist, philosopher, and academic

Born
March 21, 1949
Age in 2026
77
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1949

About Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek (born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. Žižek is a Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, professor of philosophy and psychoanalysis at the European Graduate School and senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana. He was the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London from 2004 until September 2025. He primarily works on continental philosophy (particularly Hegelianism, psychoanalysis and Marxism) and political theory, as well as film criticism and theology. Žižek is an associate of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, a group of Slovenian academics working on German idealism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, ideology critique, and media criticism. His first book in English is The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), which was used in the introduction of the Ljubljana School's thought to English-speaking audiences. He has written over 50 books in multiple languages and speaks Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, English, German, and French. The idiosyncratic style of his public appearances, frequent magazine op-eds, and academic works, characterised by the use of obscene jokes and pop cultural examples, as well as politically incorrect provocations,have gained him fame, controversy, and criticism both in and outside academia. A journal, the International Journal of Žižek Studies, was founded by professors David J. In 1988, he published his first book dedicated entirely to film theory, Pogled s strani. In the first free elections in 1990, he ran as the Liberal Democratic Party's candidate for the former four-person collective presidency of Slovenia. Žižek is a member of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) founded in 2016.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Slavoj Žižek timeline

  1. In 1988, he published his first book dedicated entirely to film theory, Pogled s strani.
  2. In the first free elections in 1990, he ran as the Liberal Democratic Party's candidate for the former four-person collective presidency of Slovenia. Žižek is a member of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) founded in 2016.

The world when Slavoj Žižek was born

Slavoj Žižek was born in 1949. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1949

  • #1 song"Riders in the Sky" – Vaughn Monroe
  • Top movieAll the King's Men
  • Top TV showTexaco Star Theater
  • Best-selling bookThe Egyptian - Mika Waltari

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentJoe Louis retires from boxing as undefeated heavyweight champion
  • Top headlineNATO established
  • Technology milestoneFirst stored-program computer runs its first program
  • Defining fadSilly Putty
  • Notable inventionSilly Putty
  • World population2.52 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderHarry S. Truman
  • Sports championNew York Yankees (World Series)
  • Also wonMinneapolis Lakers (BAA)
  • U.S. population149.2M

1949 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Slavoj Žižek's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19492026
Gas$0.27$3.45/gal
Average home$8,400$435,000
Average income$5,000$67,500
Minimum wage$0.40$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.46$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population149.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.