Janez Janša and Beyond

<p>In the summer of 2007 three artists from Slovenia legally changed their names to “Janez Janša,” the name of the right-wing Prime Minister at that time. Since then, the artists have presented their works as performances, exhibitions and a film documentary, and have continued with their investigation of “What’s in a name?”</p> <p>Starting from this famous Shakespearian question, four eminent European philosophers – Austrian Robert Pfaller and Slovenians Mladen Dolar, Jela Krečič and Slavoj Žižek – confront the implications of the Janšas’ name change and its consequences in four essays. Ten years of artistic and real life activity, here illustrated by a photographic insert, presents an opportunity for them to discuss the symbolic power of the name, the ways it affects the subject and subjectivity, and how playing with names can lead to a radical critique of our late capitalist civilization.</p>