‘The Fool’ Revisited: The Making of Žižek as Sacrificial Public Intellectual

Abstract

This article provides a sociological explanation for the global emergence of Slavoj Žižek as a public intellectual. It presents an integrative account encompassing both personal and institutional aspects. Drawing on positioning theory and performative frameworks, the article contributes to the sociology of intellectuals, as well as to the vast ‘Žižek-literature’ that focuses on his philosophical content or political activities. We analyse the distinctiveness of Žižek’s performances, arguing that Žižek acts as a ‘sacrificial intellectual’: he plays ‘the fool’ and relies on irony to undermine the traditional role of the authoritative intellectual. Within the context of the digital public sphere and declining intellectual authority, Žižek’s unique form of positioning has been particularly effective and has contributed to his celebrity status.

Public Intellectuals in Digital and Global Times: the Case of Project Syndicate

“…This can be done in the media space of opinion (Townsley, 2015 ) and in the digital space (Schwarz, 2021 ). We also agree, in this structural sense, with the pragmatist perspective, according to which intellectuals position themselves through performative interventions in specific contexts, which today are characterized by the digital age, the culture of celebrity, and the decline of the classic intellectual figure (Baert, 2012 ; Baert & Booth, 2012 ; Bar-El & Baert, 2021 ).…”

“…We do not define “public” as opposed to “private” or “common,” but as what is or becomes important for the public in different contexts, which is then configured as an “audience”. This public is neither static nor permanent, and certain situations can produce its concentration, as in “captivating the public’s attention” around issues that become relevant, which is also partly explained by the performative logics of intellectual intervention (Bar-El & Baert, 2021 ). Thus, when a crisis arises, whether political, social, or economic, this historical event gathers a public around a specific topic, and the public intellectual intervenes, either to subvert the order or — a matter that is sometimes forgotten — to reproduce or preserve it (as, for example, in the case of “public intellectuals at the service of Trump”: Swartz, 2021 ).…”

“…In the analog dimension, translation times have certainly shortened (compare those for Bourdieu’s work and that of Piketty) but are incomparably faster in the digital world. The notion of trajectory is very relevant for understanding our model, since we not only consider the variety of intellectual biographies and conceive a dynamic model but also connect to those who study these trajectories, accentuating the pragmatic moment when intellectual actors use a performance in order, for example, to boost their trajectory to a more general or global level or expand their radius of action (Baert, 2012 ; Baert & Booth, 2012 ; Bar-El & Baert, 2021 ).…”

“…There is, therefore, a correlation between the appearance of global public intellectuals and the “digital global public circuit”; however, this does not mean that technology determines the emergence of digital public intellectuals. For this type of intellectual to emerge, individual and pragmatic positioning strategies are required (Bar-El & Baert, 2021 ), as well as openings and what Joas called the “creativity of action” (Joas, 1996 ). To further develop this idea, we will characterize an empirical example, the PS platform, and how it enables the emerging figure of the digital global public intellectual.…”

How Intellectuals Perform: Meaning Making and Community in the Czechoslovak Philosophical Underground

“…More recently, performance became a topic for sociologists of intellectuals as well (Bar-El, 2021; Bar-El and Baert, 2021), some of whom also take partial inspiration from the Strong Program performance framework. Morgan and Baert (2018: 455), for example, focused on the idea of ‘performative citizenship’ in the Black Consciousness Movement.…”