Dr. Alenka Zupančič at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair: 'What is repressed returns twofold'

On Friday 20 October Dr. Alenka Zupančič spoke at a panel discussion "Ideologiekritik. Today!" on the critique of ideology in today's world at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt as part of this year's Frankfurt Book Fair. Dr. Mladen Dolar and Dr. Slavoj Žižek also took part, as well as theoreticians from the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory Dr. Rainer Forst, Dr. Regine Kreide and Dr. Martin Saar.

The following day, Zupančič made another appearance at the UNESCO'S Network of Cities of Literature event 'Narratives of Survival'. An excerpt of her statement was published, among others, in the national daily newspaper Delo on 22 October 2023:

"Truth must be sought within these specific contexts and configurations; that is why I see a link with literature and its way of articulating truth in the famous words of Jacques Lacan, who said that truth has the structure of fiction. He did not mean that truth is just a fiction, but that truth should not be thought of merely as a basic fact that can be revealed, deconstructed or pointed to, but as something that is always articulated in words, even if it is something that we cannot say directly. Something turns out to be true precisely because of an artificiality, an art of speech, of wording, of an approach that conveys a certain truth. Lacan coined the term in connection with Hamlet, the famous play within a play, the muscle, where fiction must even be duplicated in order to articulate the truth of the whole situation."