Udi Aloni and Slavoj Zizek in NYC
Over the next couple weeks, New York City is going to be treated to a couple of unique events featuring CUP author Udi Aloni and CUP Insurrections Series editor Slavoj Zizek.
First, this coming Sunday, April 15th, Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek are presenting a multifaceted theatrical performance loosely based around Aloni’s recent book, What Does a Jew Want?. After the performance itself, there will be some discussion and a book signing. Here are the details:
Udi Aloni with Slavoj Zizek:
What Does a Jew Want?
On Theory, Art and ActionSunday, April 15th 2012 @ 9:30PM
Joe’s Pub at The Public Theatre
425 Lafayette Street, New York City
Ticket Price:$15What Does a Jew Want? is a remarkable series of visual Midrash presenting philosophy, video art, story-telling, and performance. The event portrays theological political fragments of a “split Jew” through the eyes of an outrageous philosopher and an obscure artist.The talented actress, Hani Furstenberg, will be an immanent part of this event.
A book signing by Zizek and Aloni in conjunction with St. Mark’s Bookshop will follow the show.
The second event takes place Wednesday, April 25, at 7 PM, and features Slavoj Zizek speaking at the New York Public Library as part of their “LIVE from the NYPL” program. His talk is entitled “Slavoj Zizek is back with 2011: The Year of Dreaming Dangerously,” and addresses what we can learn from a variety of the events from last year, from the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring to the riots around London. Here’s what the NYPL says about the talk:
Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 7 p.m.
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Edna Barnes Salomon Room
$25 General Admission; $15 FRIENDS, Seniors and Students with valid ID“In 2011, we were witnessing (and participating) in a series of shattering events, from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall Street movements, from the UK suburban protests to Breivik’s ideological madness. 2011 was thus the year of dreaming dangerously, in both directions: there were emancipatory dreams mobilizing protesters in New York, on Tahir Square, in London and Athens–and there were the obscure destructive dreams propelling Breivik and other racist populists all around Europe.
What is the meaning of these explosions? Do they have a common root?”
–Slavoj Žižek, Spring 2012Slavoj Žižek, everyone’s favorite Slovenian cultural theorist and philosopher, is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Ljubljana, as well as an international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London. He has described himself as a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, a Christian atheist, and a Communist political activist, which he sees as four parts of the same cause. His books include First as Tragedy, Then as Farce; Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle; In Defense of Lost Causes; Living in the End Times; Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism; and God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse (co-authored with Boris Gunjevic). Žižek has appeared LIVE from the NYPL three times before: to debate Bernard Henry Lévy, deliver a presentation on “Hollywood as an Ideological Machine,” and lecture on the topic of “God Without the Sacred.” He has been the subject of several documentaries, including The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, perhaps the only film to analyze both The Matrix and Freudian penis envy.
