Razpor: On Slavoj Žižek’s First Break

Abstract

This article examines some of Slavoj Žižek’s very first texts, beginning with the poem-treatises he first published in the journal Problemi in May, 1968. It analyses how the imagery of rupture – born out of the spirit of ’68 – emerged as a key spatial metaphor that would go on to shape the theoretical topography of the philosophical platform of the now world-renowned Ljubljana School of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Beginning with Žižek’s usage of the term ‘razpor’ (‘break’) in his first poem-treatises, the article traces how this early concept is refined into the notion of ‘razdor’ in his first book, Bolečina razlike (The Pain of Difference, 1972), and finally into the later usage of ‘razcep’, which would go on to become a central concept for the entire Ljubljana School. Ultimately, the article documents the intellectual history of the notion of the ‘break’ in Žižek’s early work, thereby providing the genealogy of a concept that would later become a key component of the Ljubljana School’s theoretical platform.