Prof. Dr. Alenka Zupančič is a Research Advisor at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) and a leading voice of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis.
Her work brings Lacanian theory into dialogue with thinkers such as Nietzsche, Kant, and Hegel to rethink questions of ethics, sexuality, and ontology.
Her key books include The Shortest Shadow (2003), The Odd One In (2008), and What IS Sex? (2017).
Her latest monograph, Disavowal (2024), examines the dynamics of denial and contradiction in contemporary political crises.

Her talk in the PRISM Talk Series - Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries on Society and Mind takes Antonio Gramsci’s line, "the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters," as its point of departure to address today’s serial crises: pandemics, wars, and economic turmoil - all under the shadow of global warming.
Zupančič examines these "monsters" through philosophy and Lacanian psychoanalysis, extending arguments from her book Disavowal.
She asks whether this “time of monsters” is not just a transitional phase but rather the new world itself, and she reflects on the forms of subjectivity and struggle that the present historical moment implies, enables, or forecloses.