Not long ago, it would have been unimaginable that one of the fastest selling out “performances” in a national theatre would be a lecture by an economist; that around a thousand people would buy tickets in a single day and then eagerly await a man who, in an English softened by a French accent, was going to speak of political economy instead of love, show prosaic graphs instead of artistic video projections and attempt to offer insight instead of catharsis.

It would be very difficult for me claim to have ever been infused by a feeling similar to national pride. I love Ljubljana; I like the fact that I can be in Trieste in one hour, in Zagreb in two, in Venice in three, and in Vienna in four. I have never felt the need to explain to strangers why my homeland is something special or why it differs, in this or that, from those of others. But on occasion, I do encounter inquisitive questions about what is considered to be most Slovenian. Since I still have no answer, I prefer to reply by saying that the most famous Slovenian is a philosopher – Slavoj Žižek. This seems to me to be closest to national romanticism: other countries export cars or pride themselves on their national football teams, while we have a philosopher.