SOURCE: McNay, Lois. “Unstable in Slovenia.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5048 (31 December 1999): 23.

In the following review, McNay provides an overview of Žižek's theories of subjectivity, ideology, and psychoanalysis in The Ticklish Subject, asserting that the work is “the most systematic exposition of Žižek's theories so far.”

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian academic, political activist and one of the leading members of the Lacanian “Ljubljana group”, which uses the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to interpret a range of philosophical and cultural texts, from Hegel and Heidegger through to Hitchcock and Hollywood. An explicit aim of the Ljubljana group is to use psychoanalytic theory to reinvigorate Marxist leftism, and, in 1989, Žižek stood as a candidate in the Slovenian presidential elections.

The Ticklish Subject offers the most systematic exposition of the foundations of Žižek's theories so far. His concern to revivify leftist politics is...