The Discourse of the Wild Analyst

Slavoj Žižek’s interventions into the fields of culture and politics have characteristic resemblances with what Freud termed “wild analysis”: they are somewhat premature and do not allow the analysand to speak for itself. Instead, Žižek often poses his conclusions in the form of rhetorical questions à la: “Isn’t this precisely the real motivation behind the so called philanthro-capitalism…?” This essay defends Žižek’s wild analysis as an appropriate form of intervention in a culture that speaks a lot, but doesn’t say much. Further, the essay addresses the anxiety and the ethics of the wild analyst, which necessarily accompany its interventionist form.