Nina Krajnik: Difference between revisions

Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst

Nina Krajnik (born 9 June 1985) is a Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, writer, and public intellectual. She has also been active in politics, including 2022 Slovenian presidential election.

Krajnik graduated from the University of Ljubljana in 2009 with a bachelor’s thesis on Finnegans Wake through Lacanian Psychoanalysis.^[1] She conducted research at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation.^[2]

In 2010, she began her psychoanalytic formation at the Paris 8 University. She underwent personal analysis with Jacques-Alain Miller and attended seminars at the École de la Cause Freudienne.^[3]

Krajnik completed her PhD in philosophy in 2016 at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, with a dissertation titled Science and Psychoanalysis: Relation of Discourses Regarding the Subject in Question.^[4]

In 2015, Krajnik founded the Slovenian Association for Lacanian psychoanalysis and the international movement Lakan Balkan. Her work focuses on symptoms that emerge in times of political crises and war-related trauma.^[5][6][7] In 2019, she founded the book series Juno. Besides her native Slovene, she is fluent in French, Spanish, Italian, English, Croatian, and Serbian, and is active as a translator between these languages.^[8]

Krajnik worked as a political advisor at the Royal Danish Embassy in Ljubljana.^[5] She completed a traineeship at the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2008. From 2011 to 2014, she was a member of ASHOM’s Association of Spouses of Heads of Mission in Australia during the diplomatic tenure of her husband, Milan Balažic, who served as Slovenia’s ambassador to Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, ASEAN, and the South Pacific.^[9]

Krajnik is known for addressing psychoanalytic perspectives on Slovenian politics, notably on the 1990s economic transition, privatisation, public institutions, violence, and war trauma.^[10][11] On 25 June 2022, she officially announced her candidacy at the Slovenian presidential elections, promoting what she termed a politics of singularity.^{[12][13]
[14][12]} Her public commentary referenced thinkers such as Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Sylvain Lazarus, and Hannah Arendt.^[10] She withdrew from the presidential race in October 2022 and announced plans to form a political-psychoanalytic movement called Spring.^[15]

Between December 2023 and January 2024, during Russo-Ukrainian war, Krajnik conducted clinical fieldwork in a war zones of Kharkiv Raion, Kyiv and Bucha, Ukraine,^[16] and later founded the Institute for War and Environmental Trauma.^[17]

Krajnik’s published work includes:

• Scientific monograph: Lacanska psihoanaliza: Znanost in subjekt ^[18]
• Writings and lectures on trauma, war, and environmental crisis within psychoanalytic frameworks.^[19]
• Translation and editorial contributions the Juno book series.^[20]
• Public commentary in Slovenian media on political and social themes.^[21]