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We lack the philosophers that we require for an era marked by agitation and occupation From the UK student movement and the London riots, through to the many instantiations of the Arab Spring, along the fault lines opened along the Mediterranean from Spain to Greece, and on now to Turkey and Brazil, discontent has moved from the university seminar room and little magazine out on to the street The heyday of leftwing philosophy and theory came, somewhat ironically, during the high-water mark of capitalism, a period when the ‘end of history’ was repeatedly declared, prosperity was registered in rising house prices and dazzling growth in developing nations and the emergence of one of the most revolutionary technologies humanity has yet developed Despite this, the front tables of the better bookshops of the world were stocked with titles like Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire, a neo-Marxist – and strangely optimistic – analysis of the world at the turn of the century Critical perversity was the order of the day, as the question posed to the world-be leftist thinker was a difficult one: ‘How, when everything seems so good, when the claim is that the “rising tides” of the globalised economy will “raise all boats,” to articulate a critique of the current order’   Among only a few other colleagues and competitors, one man has stuttered to the forefront of continental philosophy and radical speculation The author of a stream of books that combine, in varying proportions, philosophical speculation and pop commentary, he is the go-to-guy for ‘serious publications’ who want some radical cultural criticism and never fails to deliver an off-the-cuff rendition of exactly the sort of eccentricity that sells copies For these troubled but exhilarating times, we have Slavoj Žižek   Understanding why Žižek has become the world’s favourite radical thinker can help us to understand both what is wrong with our intellectual situation and some of the impediments limiting the progress of this disunited worldwide movement for change It is a change which, while it might not require leaders, would certainly benefit from some articulate analysis, sage contextualisation and