A native and lifelong resident of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Slavoj Žižek was born in 1949, when the small Alpine capital was part of Communist Yugoslavia. An only child, he grew up in the household of professional parents.

Like many other young people in the former satellite states of the Soviet Union, I consumed Western popular culture avidly in preference to officially approved domestic television, books,

and films.

Much of his knowledge of Hollywood cinema – a subject he has written about extensively – was acquired during his teenage years, when he spent a lot of time at an auditorium that specialized in showing foreign films.

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