Admit it. For the longest time you’ve suspected there’s a reason these two men have never been photographed together.
Ben Stiller, of all people, was the first to draw attention to the rhetorical strategy that the professional contrarian and incessant Lacanian shares with the Sphinx. But since it pissed Stiller off so much, we were so busy relishing his impotent fury that we failed to think through the implications – that beneath the Sphinx’s masks must lurk not the excellent Wes Studi but a certain Slovenian philosopher.
Over the last decade, fractures have appeared in Žižek’s work that suggest even he is beginning to suspect himself of being one of the Mystery Men. For example, 116 pages into Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (New York: Picador 2008) Žižek writes:
It is, however, all too easy to score points in this debate using witty reversals which can go on indefinitely.
However, the remainder of the book and many of his subsequent pronouncements merely indicate the depths of his denial.
Mark Bould 