The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

2011 was the year of dreaming dangerously: we all witnessed (andparticipated in) a series of shattering events. Emancipatory dreamsmobilized protesters in New York, on Tahrir Square, in London andAthens and there were the obscure destructive dreams propelling themass murderer Breivik and racist populists all around Europe, fromthe Netherlands to Hungary. The subterranean work of dissatisfactionis continuing: rage is accumulating and a new wave of revolts willfollow. Why? Because the events of 2011 were signs from the future: weshould analyze them as limited, distorted (sometimes even perverted)fragments of a utopian future which lies dormant in the present as itshidden potential.

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.