Slavoj Žižek: Signs from the Future

As the global liberal order ends, join rockstar philosopher Slavoj Zizek as he seeks signs of the world to come.

Erudite and comic, ironic and profound, philosopher Slavoj Zizek has travelled into territory where few of us dare to tread – and aged 77 he shows no signs of becoming less provocative.

As terrifying phenomena – economic wars, fascism, techno-feudalism, land grabs, planetary destruction and genocides – overwhelm us at every turn, Slavoj joins us to ask: What can we do to stem the flow of despair?

For Slavoj, the time has come not to look backwards to history for guidance, but for signs from the future hiding our present. Could it be that the realm of fortune tellers, star gazers and conspiracists is more predictable, knowable even, than we’ve allowed ourselves to think? From Gaza to Iran, Ukraine to the streets of Minneapolis and Venezuela to Sudan, we find unfathomable and brutal events that, without decisive action now, will remain our future.

This will be an evening of dark humor to help us survive in a dark era. Slavoj will remind us why he is widely known as the ‘most dangerous philosopher in the West’: but also prompt us to action, resistance, and the fragile possibility of hope. Don’t miss it.

Moderator: Clint Burnham

Clint Burnham is a poet and critic who teaches at Simon Fraser University. He has published widely on climate change and environmentalism, psychoanalysis and Marxism, contemporary literature and popular culture. His most recent books include, in 2018, Does the Internet Have an Unconscious? Slavoj Žižek and Digital Culture (Bloomsbury), Lacan and the Environment (co-edited with Paul Kingsbury, 2021), The Goldberg Variations (poetry, 2024), and, this year, Mari Ruti and Climate Change: From Grief to Creativity (Routledge). The Naum Gabo Versions: New and Selected Poems 1997-2027 will be published in 2028 by the87press in the UK. In 2026 Burnham co-organized with Kingsbury a conference on Lacan and the University and they are collecting the contributions into book form; Burnham is also writing a memoir-study of the campus novel. Recent and forthcoming academic papers include essays on Fredric Jameson and TikTok, Palestine, Freud and the animal, the algorithm, the January 6 riot, and the so-called Freedom Convoy, all from a Lacanian-dialectical analytic.