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The Sublime Object of Ideology
In this provocative book, Slavoj Zizek takes a look at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock’s Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish joke, Zizek’s acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion that make up human society.
Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political significance of these fantasies of control.
Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political significance of these fantasies of control.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
About the author
Slavoj Žižek
589 books6,625 followersSlavoj Žižek is a Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic.
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia (then part of SFR Yugoslavia). He received a Doctor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Ljubljana and studied psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII with Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault. In 1990 he was a candidate with the party Liberal Democracy of Slovenia for Presidency of the Republic of Slovenia (an auxiliary institution, abolished in 1992).
Since 2005, Žižek has been a member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Žižek is well known for his use of the works of 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan in a new reading of popular culture. He writes on many topics including the Iraq War, fundamentalism, capitalism, tolerance, political correctness, globalization, subjectivity, human rights, Lenin, myth, cyberspace, postmodernism, multiculturalism, post-marxism, David Lynch, and Alfred Hitchcock.
In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El País he jokingly described himself as an "orthodox Lacanian Stalinist". In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! he described himself as a "Marxist" and a "Communist."
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February 13, 2014
I have no business reviewing this book- I have not the background in theory nor the knowledge of the history or methods of philosophical discourse or Lacanian psychoanalysis nor even a strong enough grasp on the concepts and terminologies to adequately say anything enlightening about The Sublime Object of Ideology. To do so adequately and thoroughly I think might require me to write a book called On Žižek’s Sublime Object Of Ideology, which of course would be ridiculous and widely discredited. So my options are twofold- remain silent or say something radically insufficient. But as Lacan teaches “when we are confronted with an apparently clear choice, sometimes the correct thing to do is choose the worst option.” So, apologies in advance for what follows...
~
The Sublime Object Of Ideology is the first book Žižek published. I have the advantage of having read some of his more recent, less theory-oriented books, and have watched many of his online lectures and his Pervert’s Guides, so with hindsight I can enjoy the pleasure of seeing in his first publication the groundwork for what has come after and been developed into his multifaceted, broad body of cultural critique. This book is dense, and difficult, and it required me to consult my beginner’s guide to Lacan many times, and also to search out Hegelian, Kantian, Heidegerreaneannn Fichtean et al ideas and definitions of terms online. So it was work. It was not entertainment. Yet, it strangely was, and often. Why did I not stop reading this book even though there were sections I had to reread three times and consult outside sources and basically learn again to use words not in my accustomed definition or context but in this new language of Hegelian-Žižekean-Lacanese, and accept that there were certain passages that would remain for a long time enigmatic and beyond me? Part of this lesson of perseverance comes from the book itself, to accept the limitations inherent in existing as a subject; but beyond that, Žižek anchors his theory in references to things that are very clear to me, film and literature, Hitchcock and Buñuel and Austen and Kafka, or in his famous little perverted jokes about totalitarianism and bureaucratic absurdity and psychological contradictions. So you take your machete and chop through the thick jungle undergrowth of theory and then you come to a little clearing, a Žižekean insertion, joke or reference, and then you realize something odd has happened- the preceding density, the exposition of theory that led to its distillation in the joke or cultural reference has somehow embedded itself in your unconscious, it has somehow achieved some kind of germination while you weren’t looking, while you were paying attention to something else, and suddenly there is a kind of obscure clarity that comes. Žižek possesses that quality that usually makes the difference between a really smart teacher you hate and a really smart teacher you like- humor, and he has it in droves. He may be the smartest guy in the room in every room he’s ever been in, but he knows a dirty joke or three to lighten the mood.
The book itself is an analysis and critique of human agency in the postmodern world. As his first book, I see it as Žižek’s opening volley, his first jab at getting past postmodernism and poststructuralism, and attempting a way out of the deadlock of the externally determined subject. He accomplishes this through his (now) notorious reading of Hegel through Lacan, and Lacan back through Hegel, with Marx hanging around, and Freud, and Kant, and, well, the entire history of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and linguistics. Like I said, the smartest guy in any given room. At this point, a lot of reviewers, brighter and better than I, might go into a lengthy analysis of his philosophy, with counter-examples and arguments from sundry sources and their own critique, but as my stated aim and highest ambition is radical insufficiency, I’m just going to note a few of the points that really stuck with me, and hope that it is clear that to get at any of this with any kind of a thing-approaching-understanding, you should just go to the book itself.
The main concern of The Sublime Object… is the passing of the subject through modes of “reflection”- the goal being a kind of “subjective destitution”, where the subject no longer presupposes himself as subject, but by recognizing the non-existence of the big Other, annuls himself as subject, and comes to accept “misrecognition” (the gap between the Real and its symbolization) as not only fundamental to his subjective freedom, but constitutive of himself as a “positing” subject. Sound like a mess? Well, by the end of this book this comes to mean something. I’ll attempt to put it into other words. Every interaction with the material, phenomenal world is mediated by and through a language of some kind, or better, through the form of a language- as Lacanian theory posits that even the unconscious is structured like a language. We can only approach the phenomenal world through the medium and modes of signification and symbolization. But the act of signifying, the use of language, is limited, is at times paradoxical, and thus open to fissures and errors of understanding and perception, and obviously this implies errors of self-realization, self-determination. A subject (I now like to think of “subject” as meaning “man as unnatural, “nature sick unto death”” [sick with the affliction of language?]) is born, thrown into the symbolic network (the big Other- Language, Law, Society) and presumed to know how to act within it. But unlike the Foucaldian notion of subject as one who must “without any support from universal rules, build his own mode of self-mastery; he must harmonize the antagonism of the powers within himself- invent himself, so to speak, produce himself as subject, find his own particular art of living” (a classic “postmodern" notion), Žižek emphasizes a notion of subject aligned with Althusser, and his “insistence on the fact that a certain cleft, a certain fissure, misrecognition, characterizes the human condition as such”.
This “unavoidable misrecognition”, this delusion of the subject attempting to signify itself within the symbolic network of the big Other (this ideological distortion) is where Žižek finds Hegel and Lacan meeting and piercing the veil (or, to be more precise, piercing the illusion of the existence of the veil.) The signifying network creates the social structure, but that symbolic order is organized around a lack, an inaccessible "kernel of the Real", and the "misrecognition" by the subject of that inaccessible "kernel" creates fissures, “symptoms”, which emerge in all kinds of residues, ruptures, hysterias, obsessions, antagonisms, excesses, from the personal to a societal, historical-political scale. Žižek suggests these can be put through Hegel’s dialectical wringer and methods of Lacanian psychoanalysis- so that the subject initially “determined” by these external forces can become a subject of “determinate reflection”, by an instigation of his own activity into the “brute” material world.
Along this bumpy way, Žižek covers so many ideas and subjects that it would be pointless to attempt to touch on even a fraction of them. But, I will briefly talk about two (two which are actually one, as the one leads into the other) which might go further in clarifying some of this, before I move on and tell you to just go ahead and pick up a copy of this book and spend some intimate/extimate time with it…
-There is an important section wherein Žižek talks about the movement from “positing reflection” to “determinate reflection”, the “condition of our subjective freedom”, in terms of the dialectic triad of the Greek-Jewish-Christian religions.
”Greek religion embodies the moment of ‘positing reflection’: in it, the plurality of spiritual individuals (gods) is immediately ‘posited’ as the given spiritual essence of the world. The Jewish religion introduces the moment of ‘external reflection’- all positivity is abolished by reference to the unapproachable, transcendent God, the absolute Master, the One of absolute negativity, while Christianity conceives the individuality of man not as something external to God but as a ‘reflective determination’ of God himself (in the figure of Christ, God himself ‘becomes man’)."
The Greek religion sees divinity in “a multitude of beautiful appearances” that make up the phenomenal/spiritual world. In the Jewish religion the subject perceives itself within a transcendent, all powerful, but unattainable form (the big Other). In the final movement into the Christian religion, the subject’s “freedom” is found in identification with the big Other, in a “reflexive determination” of the subject by the presence of the alien Thing. The final dialectical movement is seeing in the big Other nothing other than one's subjective self "positing" the big Other, that God (the big Other) reveals himself to man (subject) in the form of God's son (the big Other consubstantial with the subject). Therefore:
-The crucial difference is in the difference between Kantian and Hegelian definitions of the Sublime. The Sublime is an object of nature, the representation of which is beyond our power of reasoning. That is, it is a place where words fail, beyond representation in the symbolic order, beyond language. The sublime object is “an object raised to the level of the (impossible-real) Thing.” For Kant, the “failure” of language to embrace, to be able to signify such sublime objects, such moments, is evidence of the Thing (that which is beyond symbolization) shining through them- the phenomenal world is a “veil” or mask hiding, blocking access to the true “essence” of the objects, which is beyond our grasping. If we could pull back the veil the Thing in all its totality would be revealed, but we are limited by our subjective condition, our prison of language and symbolization. However for Hegel, and for Žižek, this moment of achieving “the condition of our subjective freedom” is in the very recognition that the sublime object, the apparent presence of a Thing shining through the object, the apprehension of the unattainable “essence behind the veil” is in and of itself only the moment of the realization that behind the veil there is nothing. That is, appearance is all that there is, and that the illusion that takes place when words fail, that if we could only “find the words”, “pull back the veil”, all would be revealed as a closed whole, is simply a misrecognition made by the subject. That this negativity is constitutive of the subject and the Other itself- and the sublime object is nothing but a kind of place-marker, embodying a scrap of the Real, a something that is in its essence Nothing. The subject’s freedom lies in the recognition that “there is no big Other”, that the big Other is only an identification of ourselves with an illusion, which then opens up a space for us to act, to assert ourselves into the symbolic order, to assert our “freedom”, by understanding that all of this symbolic reality was already only in a way being created by the way we look for it in the first place.
Anyway, I'm in over my head here, and as I said, you should probably just go ahead and pick up a copy of this book and spend some intimate/extimate time with it.
April 15, 2017
"I don't know shit lmao" - Socrates
February 28, 2011
Zizek's most revolutionary message, I think, is also probably his simplest: the subject must take responsibility for his own subjectivity. This is a message nobody wants to hear. Especially not today, when the drink of choice is postmodern skepticism: "I am aware of what I am doing but I do it anyway." Zizek takes aim at the post-structuralist, the postmodernist, the post-whateverist, the empty Foucauldian fad, the politically correct, the practicing non-believer, the all-too-comfortable victim, etc., etc., and then he throws lots of vegetables at their big silly phallic performance. Duck!
December 13, 2013
My word. My eyes bled. My brain thumped against the inside of my skull. I took long baths with it. I contemplated its murder. If I just drop this in the bath... This isn't a chap who wants you to argue with him. He's not one of those, "Let me be as clear as possible here" type chaps. No, he's a monstrous show off. He splices together the ideas of Marx and Lacan using the Hegelian dialectic. Why? Because he can? Or is it like he says, to shed mutual light on both - and of course - on the what of what ideology is. Thing is, I can't help feeling that his obscurantism is a stalling tactic... Stalling for what? I don't know. But here's an undoubtedly uber-clever leftie (nothing wrong with that) who reads the most impenetrable shit he can find (everyone needs a hobby) and then uses his hero Herr Hegel to basically justify his political vision, which hasn't come to be, which leads us back to the stalling... But whatever. Love him. Hate him. Deify him. Call him a phoney. He's a noise. Personally, (if you must read this) I'd recommend reading his journalism, usually in The Guardian, and some of the more lucidly insightful reviews on here before tackling this, his seminal work. Oh, and by the way, students: don't even think about getting high and reading this. It'll all make sense until the smoke clears, maybe... And one last thing, the title, that title. That's the clue. You see, it's Us.
July 7, 2021
Multiple times in this book Zizek states that “there is nothing behind”. This statement applies perfectly to this book: there is nothing behind this book, there are no depths at all in it, and everything takes place in a single plane – that of representation and of words without any reference. This free floating and unidimensional plane makes it possible that Kant, Hegel, and Marx are brought side-by-side with Coca-Cola, Marlboro, the movie Alien, and Tom & Jerry. Words like transcendental, thing-in-itself, dialectic, and alienation are continuously mixed with penis, vagina, and excrement. The topic changes nonstop and so are the books and authors referenced. By forcing everything together in the same plane, paradoxes and contradictions abound and Zizek wittingly presents them to us.
One can learn a few interesting things from this book; but fundamentally this is a postmodern manifesto. It seems to me that this book provided a style (but not a content - since there is none) for fields like Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, Marxist Theory, Postmodern Philosophy, and so on; instead of a popular, funny, free-floating, witty, intentionally abstruse, self-referential book - now there are such “research” fields.
One can learn a few interesting things from this book; but fundamentally this is a postmodern manifesto. It seems to me that this book provided a style (but not a content - since there is none) for fields like Comparative Literature, Critical Theory, Marxist Theory, Postmodern Philosophy, and so on; instead of a popular, funny, free-floating, witty, intentionally abstruse, self-referential book - now there are such “research” fields.
Read
January 26, 2012Read the first three chapters. So dense, but so many "aha!" moments on the way through. Zizek combines Marxist commodity and ideology theory with Lacanian psychoanalytics to suggest that identity, ideology, and the self all necessarily depend upon an inaccessible excess, a "kernel of the Real" that we cannot and indeed should not grasp in the symbolic order. The point is consequently not one of understanding the truth that ideology hides, or of lifting the dream content to the latent meaning below, but of understanding how the inaccessible is in and constitutive of the forms of ideology and the self alike. Perhaps most brilliantly, this means that ideology's goal is not to persuade us of a truth and have us act accordingly; rather it constructs the fantasy that is the social reality, and it only cares that we act as if we believed in it. Our actual beliefs, our "real" thoughts below the surface, are beside the point.
I think. Maybe. I got lost when he started mapping out the creation of the subject. Homosocial.
I think. Maybe. I got lost when he started mapping out the creation of the subject. Homosocial.
March 26, 2013
I cannot write to the impact that Slavoj Žižek's The Sublime Object of Ideology has had upon Lacanian Psychoanalyis or Marxist Criticism. I cannot even lie enough to tell you, dear reader, that I understood the majority of this text. But I do know that of what I understood, I thoroughly enjoyed and gathered not only a new perception of the world, but the terminology with which to envision it.
Before remarking that Žižek's writing is "____" or that Žižek's interpretation of the Lacanian "____" is "_____," let me state why I read this book, and why someone should read this book. I'll begin with the latter: I cannot imagine a reason for someone to read this book. Unless, said person is interested in Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Stalinism, a general critique of the Postmodern, etc. But, these are highly individualized and specialized reasons. I read this for one of those reasons: I knew this was a seminal work, and I like Žižek's writing. I find him quite entertaining, and I appreciate what many criticize about Žižek: namely, his blend of good ol' Socialist humor adjacent to Marxist/Lacanian theory.
But, on with the show. For a number of years now, quite before I knew of Žižek, I have been approaching individuals with this notion: there is no such thing as choice. Now, I don't go saying this willy-nilly to everyone; no. Gosh, no! I only reserve it for those who I wish to engage in a bit of an intellectual battle with, i.e. someone who can, perhaps, change my mind or, better yet, harden my thought. You can work this notion from the consumerist angle of limited selection, or the lovely Leninist paraphrase, "freedom, but for whom and for what!" or any others to fit your sparring partner. But what you really want them to realize is that even what they say to me has been determined. Even me saying "there is no choice" is determined by a mix of my experiences, memory, journeys, gender, class, race, language, nationalism, heredity, and so on, and so on. But, I am totally okay with that.
You see, they (my straw men) fight to hold on to this banal notion of "individuality" being made up of "choices"—I had coffee this morning because I decided to; not because of my environment, my internal make up, my bank account, my access to coffee, the development of coffee as a commodity, etc. And when you present the absurd aphorism that "there is no choice," the first response is fear. Go ahead, try it on the first person you meet. I'll wait...
IF, a big IF, you can get past this initial fear of the loss of morality, freedom, ability, talent—not to mention the Protestant virtue of the individual—etc., then you must counter their fear. They must know that in the absence of choice, or "free will" for you old school philosophers, we still retain our individuality. There is no one like you. And there is no one like me. (Even an imitation is just that: an imitation of the thing. Even if I am an imitation, I am still this original imitation that is occurring now. God save Postmodernism). Even the hypothetical identical-twin-sci-fi-crap renders individuality a truism. Because no one can occupy your space or your time. Even if they did, the slightest deviance (say, a misplaced hair or an unbuttoned shirt collar) would alter any similarities. (And even those things would not be "choices").
So, to make the theory of "choice," one simply must isolate an incident. Then—and this is important, which is why I used an em-dash—the incident, once severed from any prior beginnings or futile continuation, is immediately rendered moral. AND: "There are no moral phenomenon at all, but only moral interpretations of phenomena." (Agreed, I wouldn't acquiesce to someone who quotes Nietzsche either.) So, let's try this:
I feel quite vindicated in my initial philosophical challenge. And the thing is that there are a handful of other chapters and sub-chapters that made total sense to me! Totally. Like: pieces of "How Did Marx invent the Symptom?," "the subject presumed to..." on page 210, or "Positing the presuppositions" on page 244. (The rest of the text consisting of Lacanian hieroglyphics that I hope to someday render in to perfect psychoanalytic crop circles that eventually reveal, revive and revel in the Real, the Symptom, the Imaginary, and das Ding all in one foul grand gesture in which the proletariat will finally come to total consciousness, amass in the nearest city and stare blankly, longingly at the sky waiting for Lacan to appear in some great 1960s Télévision set floating overhead. Perhaps I've said too much... Oder: Vielleicht, ich habe zu viel gesagt).
I think the difficulty of this text lies in the thickness of it; no, no, not the page number; um, the density; yeah, that's it: density. So, I'll keep it on my shelf for inefficient perusal the proverbial "wait a second, I gotta find this quote!". I can discuss a mere five pages of this text for hours; or, for that matter, write an annoyingly long book review on one sub-chapter. But I only write this stuff for me. And, luckily, you, dear reader, have no choice.
Before remarking that Žižek's writing is "____" or that Žižek's interpretation of the Lacanian "____" is "_____," let me state why I read this book, and why someone should read this book. I'll begin with the latter: I cannot imagine a reason for someone to read this book. Unless, said person is interested in Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Stalinism, a general critique of the Postmodern, etc. But, these are highly individualized and specialized reasons. I read this for one of those reasons: I knew this was a seminal work, and I like Žižek's writing. I find him quite entertaining, and I appreciate what many criticize about Žižek: namely, his blend of good ol' Socialist humor adjacent to Marxist/Lacanian theory.
But, on with the show. For a number of years now, quite before I knew of Žižek, I have been approaching individuals with this notion: there is no such thing as choice. Now, I don't go saying this willy-nilly to everyone; no. Gosh, no! I only reserve it for those who I wish to engage in a bit of an intellectual battle with, i.e. someone who can, perhaps, change my mind or, better yet, harden my thought. You can work this notion from the consumerist angle of limited selection, or the lovely Leninist paraphrase, "freedom, but for whom and for what!" or any others to fit your sparring partner. But what you really want them to realize is that even what they say to me has been determined. Even me saying "there is no choice" is determined by a mix of my experiences, memory, journeys, gender, class, race, language, nationalism, heredity, and so on, and so on. But, I am totally okay with that.
You see, they (my straw men) fight to hold on to this banal notion of "individuality" being made up of "choices"—I had coffee this morning because I decided to; not because of my environment, my internal make up, my bank account, my access to coffee, the development of coffee as a commodity, etc. And when you present the absurd aphorism that "there is no choice," the first response is fear. Go ahead, try it on the first person you meet. I'll wait...
IF, a big IF, you can get past this initial fear of the loss of morality, freedom, ability, talent—not to mention the Protestant virtue of the individual—etc., then you must counter their fear. They must know that in the absence of choice, or "free will" for you old school philosophers, we still retain our individuality. There is no one like you. And there is no one like me. (Even an imitation is just that: an imitation of the thing. Even if I am an imitation, I am still this original imitation that is occurring now. God save Postmodernism). Even the hypothetical identical-twin-sci-fi-crap renders individuality a truism. Because no one can occupy your space or your time. Even if they did, the slightest deviance (say, a misplaced hair or an unbuttoned shirt collar) would alter any similarities. (And even those things would not be "choices").
So, to make the theory of "choice," one simply must isolate an incident. Then—and this is important, which is why I used an em-dash—the incident, once severed from any prior beginnings or futile continuation, is immediately rendered moral. AND: "There are no moral phenomenon at all, but only moral interpretations of phenomena." (Agreed, I wouldn't acquiesce to someone who quotes Nietzsche either.) So, let's try this:
"the subject must freely choose the community to which he already belongs, independent of his choice--he must choose what is already given to him". Furthermore, "The point is that he is never actually in a position to choose: he is always treated as if he had already chosen". Finally, "we must stress that there is nothing 'totalitarian' about it. The subject who thinks he can avoid this paradox and really have a free choice is a psychotic subject". (Žižek 186, original italics)
I feel quite vindicated in my initial philosophical challenge. And the thing is that there are a handful of other chapters and sub-chapters that made total sense to me! Totally. Like: pieces of "How Did Marx invent the Symptom?," "the subject presumed to..." on page 210, or "Positing the presuppositions" on page 244. (The rest of the text consisting of Lacanian hieroglyphics that I hope to someday render in to perfect psychoanalytic crop circles that eventually reveal, revive and revel in the Real, the Symptom, the Imaginary, and das Ding all in one foul grand gesture in which the proletariat will finally come to total consciousness, amass in the nearest city and stare blankly, longingly at the sky waiting for Lacan to appear in some great 1960s Télévision set floating overhead. Perhaps I've said too much... Oder: Vielleicht, ich habe zu viel gesagt).
I think the difficulty of this text lies in the thickness of it; no, no, not the page number; um, the density; yeah, that's it: density. So, I'll keep it on my shelf for inefficient perusal the proverbial "wait a second, I gotta find this quote!". I can discuss a mere five pages of this text for hours; or, for that matter, write an annoyingly long book review on one sub-chapter. But I only write this stuff for me. And, luckily, you, dear reader, have no choice.
February 18, 2021
What first strikes me as the biggest characteristic of Zizek's work is his nondogmatism; that is he is critical of all and every tradition and points out flaws even in those he respects the most. This is in my opinion the defining feature of a true intellectual; recognizing no masters and believing nothing as an obvious fact. Contrasting this with the NPC twitter communism, we can see clearly their entire lack of critical thought. Repeating the same slogans and calling for the resurrection of the soviet union as if the world's current issues such as inequality and climate change have been already solved and we simply have to act out the solution. Here Zizek appears very critical of Marx and even agrees with the capitalist Fukuyama that communism allows a nation to grow rapidly but then prevents it from growing further than than post industrial stage.
So we might say that Zizek is a pessimist similar to mark fischer since he believes capitalism with all its intolerable flaws will always win over communism and that there is no escape from this horror reality. But this is when Zizek presents a sort of peakon of hope in the form of an ingenious philosophical breakthrough. By being well acquainted in the works of hegel and lacan, he was able to show that in a sense both these people were talking about the same thing from different angles and we can combine their work to arrive at something radically new.
First he mentions how Kant proposed in "Critique of pure reason" that there is not one world but two; the phenomenological and the noumenal. And while we can see and interact with the first one the second is out of reach due to the limits on our brain that prevent us from accessing it. So Kant called it the "thing in itself" that which exists independently of us. Hegel then showed that what Kant is referring to as "thing in itself" is in fact "thought in itself" because it exists in and only in our thoughts therefor it is a part of us that nonetheless we cannot see.
"To conceive the appearance as 'mere appearance' the subject effectively has to go beyond it, to 'pass over' it, but what he finds there is his own act of passage."
Now Zizek showed that Lacan independently discovered this concept but named it "the Real". It is a void in the center of our psyche that we cannot access or study or even speak of. Then Zizek argues that since these two were talking about the same thing then we can combine them and say that the Lacanian "Real" is subject to the Hegelian "historical dialectic".
This is all abstract and theoretical but by presenting this argument Zizek points to a possible new political system of which we are currently oblivious.
The take away message is that capitalism should not be underestimated and it should not be assumed that a solution already exists for the problems we are facing today. It is the task of geniuses to think of new solutions and more importantly it is their task to communicate their ideas with the general public using pop culture references like Zizek often does.
There are so many other topics discussed in this book but a summary can only get so long.
So we might say that Zizek is a pessimist similar to mark fischer since he believes capitalism with all its intolerable flaws will always win over communism and that there is no escape from this horror reality. But this is when Zizek presents a sort of peakon of hope in the form of an ingenious philosophical breakthrough. By being well acquainted in the works of hegel and lacan, he was able to show that in a sense both these people were talking about the same thing from different angles and we can combine their work to arrive at something radically new.
First he mentions how Kant proposed in "Critique of pure reason" that there is not one world but two; the phenomenological and the noumenal. And while we can see and interact with the first one the second is out of reach due to the limits on our brain that prevent us from accessing it. So Kant called it the "thing in itself" that which exists independently of us. Hegel then showed that what Kant is referring to as "thing in itself" is in fact "thought in itself" because it exists in and only in our thoughts therefor it is a part of us that nonetheless we cannot see.
"To conceive the appearance as 'mere appearance' the subject effectively has to go beyond it, to 'pass over' it, but what he finds there is his own act of passage."
Now Zizek showed that Lacan independently discovered this concept but named it "the Real". It is a void in the center of our psyche that we cannot access or study or even speak of. Then Zizek argues that since these two were talking about the same thing then we can combine them and say that the Lacanian "Real" is subject to the Hegelian "historical dialectic".
This is all abstract and theoretical but by presenting this argument Zizek points to a possible new political system of which we are currently oblivious.
The take away message is that capitalism should not be underestimated and it should not be assumed that a solution already exists for the problems we are facing today. It is the task of geniuses to think of new solutions and more importantly it is their task to communicate their ideas with the general public using pop culture references like Zizek often does.
There are so many other topics discussed in this book but a summary can only get so long.
April 1, 2011
Absolutely Brilliant--I had the perfect aha moment, that beautiful instance where the parts snap into place and you begin to understand his theory from the inside--where you can anticipate what zizek will say next, being able to inhabit the system of thought he's working with.
I've been a quasi-fan of Zizek for a long time--agreeing with much of what he has to say but always looking at it from the outside. That is to say, his conclusions seemed incredibly incisive but I couldn't grasp exactly how he was coming to them. I made the mistake of reading much of later work first--my local library only had "The Monstrosity of Christ"-- and sort of stumbled through them, always enjoying them, but never coming out at the end with a real grasp of what he was saying. I mostly reveled in the paradoxes and felt a little self-satisfaction knowing that someone really smart felt there was something insincere & dissimulating about triumphant multicultural liberalism.
But this book is actually systematic! Not something I've learned to expect from zizek. I finally get the whys and wherefores of his thought and I'm ecstatic. This is definitely the place to start, provided you have at least a limited acquaintance with continental thought.
That said, I can see a few flaws.
His theory (that is to say, his presentation of Hegel via Lacan) offers an incredibly powerful model of how the interdependence of Society and the Subject is structured. How it's glued together through language. What it fails to offer is any coherent explanation of how the "Real" Libidinalizes this structure. It's explained as an incompleteness of any signifying chain, as an excess concealing the lack in the symbolic order. That's fine, and I think it's probably true: Desire is always structured to conceal the radical impossiblity of the social order. But why does the real take this particular form?
I can't shake the feeling that he's looking at it from the wrong angle. Desire is always presented as an alien force, patching the gaps of an eternal steel edifice with its oozy phantasmal goo. Desire is only there because it has to be.
But Where does it come from and why does it have the subjective physical texture that it does? Is the only conceivable fix for a logically inconsistent system Desire as humans live it? Is it impossible that Desire could ever exist in a different form? Does Zizek's theory of desire do much help when considering the sheer joy of the creative process, of the sensation of being "in the zone" or "losing oneself" in an activity?
I agree with his characterization of society in general and I agree that, as such, this society produces a very distinct and standard subject who desires in a certain way. But I simply cannot detect in his writing any proof of the universality he claims for his model. And, if it is as universal as he claims, just what is the reason for his revolutionary politics? As far as I can tell, the best thing he can envision is to be a well adjusted individual in a perfectly oedipal society, eternally dissatisfied but aware that he has to be dissatisfied in all possible worlds. If you believe that, why bother with a revolution?
I've been a quasi-fan of Zizek for a long time--agreeing with much of what he has to say but always looking at it from the outside. That is to say, his conclusions seemed incredibly incisive but I couldn't grasp exactly how he was coming to them. I made the mistake of reading much of later work first--my local library only had "The Monstrosity of Christ"-- and sort of stumbled through them, always enjoying them, but never coming out at the end with a real grasp of what he was saying. I mostly reveled in the paradoxes and felt a little self-satisfaction knowing that someone really smart felt there was something insincere & dissimulating about triumphant multicultural liberalism.
But this book is actually systematic! Not something I've learned to expect from zizek. I finally get the whys and wherefores of his thought and I'm ecstatic. This is definitely the place to start, provided you have at least a limited acquaintance with continental thought.
That said, I can see a few flaws.
His theory (that is to say, his presentation of Hegel via Lacan) offers an incredibly powerful model of how the interdependence of Society and the Subject is structured. How it's glued together through language. What it fails to offer is any coherent explanation of how the "Real" Libidinalizes this structure. It's explained as an incompleteness of any signifying chain, as an excess concealing the lack in the symbolic order. That's fine, and I think it's probably true: Desire is always structured to conceal the radical impossiblity of the social order. But why does the real take this particular form?
I can't shake the feeling that he's looking at it from the wrong angle. Desire is always presented as an alien force, patching the gaps of an eternal steel edifice with its oozy phantasmal goo. Desire is only there because it has to be.
But Where does it come from and why does it have the subjective physical texture that it does? Is the only conceivable fix for a logically inconsistent system Desire as humans live it? Is it impossible that Desire could ever exist in a different form? Does Zizek's theory of desire do much help when considering the sheer joy of the creative process, of the sensation of being "in the zone" or "losing oneself" in an activity?
I agree with his characterization of society in general and I agree that, as such, this society produces a very distinct and standard subject who desires in a certain way. But I simply cannot detect in his writing any proof of the universality he claims for his model. And, if it is as universal as he claims, just what is the reason for his revolutionary politics? As far as I can tell, the best thing he can envision is to be a well adjusted individual in a perfectly oedipal society, eternally dissatisfied but aware that he has to be dissatisfied in all possible worlds. If you believe that, why bother with a revolution?
January 28, 2023
Na tijdens mijn Erasmus-uitwisseling het ene na het andere (vaak saaie) academische artikel te slikken, had ik zin om nog eens een echt goed boek te lezen. Eerste kandidaat was uiteraard The Sublime Object of Ideology, Slavoj Žižeks eerste boek en ooit door hemzelf genoemd als een van zijn favorieten.
Het eerste hoofdstuk ('How Did Marx Invent the Symptom?') vond ik nog het interessantst. Daar werkt Žižek een opvatting van ideologie uit waarmee hij zijn tijd voor was: ideologieën worden niet gebruikt door de machtigen om al de rest te brainwashen, maar moeten juist gezien worden als gedeeld, als iets waar niet aan ontsnapt kan worden, als 'a [social] being in itself'. (Ik gebruik hier graag de zin waarmee Jan De Vos deze visie samenvatte: “Recall Žižek’s summary of Marx: it is not that we have the wrong idea about how things really are, we have the wrong idea of how in reality things are mystified.”)
De rest van het boek vond ik veel minder memorabel, enerzijds omdat de inhoud anders was dan ik verwachtte (ik had gedacht dat het meer echt over ideologieën ging gaan), anderzijds omdat dit boek wel degelijk een stevige voorkennis lacaniaanse psychoanalyse veronderstelt. Bovendien is het boek erg chaotisch (het is dan ook Žižek). Vooral de laatste twee hoofdstukken van het boek zijn erg pittig door al deze zaken, met lange epistemologische, taalfilosofische en metafysische uitweidingen, maar het hele boek blijft verteerbaar door Žižeks frequent gebruik van absurde en soms vulgaire humor om zijn punt te illustreren. (ik vraag mij trouwens af wat een lacaniaan zou zeggen van het feit dat we over boeken in dergelijke orale termen praten: een boek 'verslinden', 'licht verteerbare lectuur', 'Reader's Digest', ...) Žižeks fantastische gewoonte om om de haverklap naar Griekse mythen, romans, films en bizarre Sovjet-moppen te verwijzen begon dus reeds in dit boek.
Samengevat: ik kan het boek aanraden, maar vooral voor wie al wat achtergrond heeft in lacaniaanse psychoanalyse (zelf weet ik na het lezen van dit boek nog altijd niet wat een 'objet petit a' of 'fallische betekenaar' moge zijn, of wat Lacan bedoelde met zijn wiskundige grafieken). Voor de rest is het enkel leesbaar voor wie geduld heeft en Žižeks humor kan smaken.
Het eerste hoofdstuk ('How Did Marx Invent the Symptom?') vond ik nog het interessantst. Daar werkt Žižek een opvatting van ideologie uit waarmee hij zijn tijd voor was: ideologieën worden niet gebruikt door de machtigen om al de rest te brainwashen, maar moeten juist gezien worden als gedeeld, als iets waar niet aan ontsnapt kan worden, als 'a [social] being in itself'. (Ik gebruik hier graag de zin waarmee Jan De Vos deze visie samenvatte: “Recall Žižek’s summary of Marx: it is not that we have the wrong idea about how things really are, we have the wrong idea of how in reality things are mystified.”)
De rest van het boek vond ik veel minder memorabel, enerzijds omdat de inhoud anders was dan ik verwachtte (ik had gedacht dat het meer echt over ideologieën ging gaan), anderzijds omdat dit boek wel degelijk een stevige voorkennis lacaniaanse psychoanalyse veronderstelt. Bovendien is het boek erg chaotisch (het is dan ook Žižek). Vooral de laatste twee hoofdstukken van het boek zijn erg pittig door al deze zaken, met lange epistemologische, taalfilosofische en metafysische uitweidingen, maar het hele boek blijft verteerbaar door Žižeks frequent gebruik van absurde en soms vulgaire humor om zijn punt te illustreren. (ik vraag mij trouwens af wat een lacaniaan zou zeggen van het feit dat we over boeken in dergelijke orale termen praten: een boek 'verslinden', 'licht verteerbare lectuur', 'Reader's Digest', ...) Žižeks fantastische gewoonte om om de haverklap naar Griekse mythen, romans, films en bizarre Sovjet-moppen te verwijzen begon dus reeds in dit boek.
Samengevat: ik kan het boek aanraden, maar vooral voor wie al wat achtergrond heeft in lacaniaanse psychoanalyse (zelf weet ik na het lezen van dit boek nog altijd niet wat een 'objet petit a' of 'fallische betekenaar' moge zijn, of wat Lacan bedoelde met zijn wiskundige grafieken). Voor de rest is het enkel leesbaar voor wie geduld heeft en Žižeks humor kan smaken.
April 25, 2023
Read this only if you are insanely obsessed with Hegel, Lacan and savage jokes. I loved everything in it. Maybe my surplus leftover kernel of the Real keeps me glued to the symbolic Universe created by Zizek. Otherwise if i go too deep into Zizek,my reality might dissolve and i might get cold out there in that void space of the Real.
June 12, 2018
Some interesting kernels contained here and there but buried beneath verbose padding. Some of the points made (the relation of Marxism to the "symptom" for example) are genuinely good (or, at least thoughtful), but whether or not they are worth trawling through the rest is a different question.
June 13, 2018
Essentially the one book Zizek has written. Everything else has to some extant been a variation.
March 12, 2024
Naast de val van de muur het slechtste wat 1989 te bieden heeft
December 14, 2023
I quite liked this. There were definitely some parts I didn't understand, but the "first pass" of speculative philosophy, as Zizek notes, is doomed to failure... but nevertheless this failure is constitutive of further instantiations - and this movement of failure and re-reading just is the immanent movement of truth. Pasted below are some of my notes I took during my reading. This may or may not be helpful to anyone who decides to read this review:
Primal baptism of the object. Rigid designator aims towards the surplus-enjoyment of the object: that which is in the object more than the object itself. A residue of symbolization that is always left over. (pgs. 101 to 108)
Quilting point: the empty signifier (signifier without signified) that unifies an entire discourse, an embodied lack that is experienced as plenitude. "Ideological anamorphosis" is the "error of perspective" that sees the empty signifier as a plenitude. (pgs. 108-110)
Connection of Kantian morality with fascism. (pgs. 86-92). Has something to do with the empty formalism of the Law and connecting it to enjoyment (jouissance). This section deserves a re-read.
Belief prior to belief: in the context of Pascal's wager, Pascal says something like: if you merely follow the rituals and customs of religious belief, then you will believe. But being able to follow these customs requires a certain belief that comes prior to belief. I think this belief prior to belief is conditioned by custom, so there is a paradoxical constitution here. Unclear on exactly the interplay here. (pgs. 38-39)
Fantasy is the means through which desire is constituted. It is through fantasy that we learn how to desire. Fantasy is a kind of frame for desire. (pgs. 132-133).
The bits about Tom from Tom and Jerry having two bodies: the one that gets pulverized and exploded and the one that continually renews itself in the next scene as an illustration of the sublime object is some mind-bending stuff. Funny too. (pgs. 149-150)
The "Lenin in Warsaw" joke is very funny and used an illustration on how there's no metalanguage. The joke goes: There's a painting titled "Lenin in Warsaw" and the scene depicts Lenin's wife in bed with a young man from the Young Communist League. A museum patron asks the curator "Excuse me, but where is Lenin?" and the curator replies "Why, he's in Warsaw". I don't quite grasp the full contours of this example or why it is important, but something that seems to be true is it's an illustration of the subject/object relationship. The object is Lenin's being in Warsaw. The object is equated with objet petit a. The subject is the scene actually depicted, Lenin's wife in bed with the young man. The object (Lenin's being away) makes possible the subject (Lenin's wife in bed). (pgs. 177-181)
Zizek articulates subjectivation in post-structuralism as an "effect of a fundamentally non-subject process" (Pg. 197). The subject is effectuated through this being caught up in pre-subject processes such as desire or writing. Lacan's idea of subjectivation is that the subject is lack/void. If we abstract subjectivation from the effects that it's caught up in (desire, writing) what it reveals is an original lack, an original void. "...what the subjectivation masks is not a pre or trans-subjective process of writing but a lack in the structure, a lack which is the subject." (pg. 197)
Speculative philosophy obtains its meaning not immediately, but this failed first pass is part of what constitutes its truth. The bits about Hegel and reflection largely went over my head, but the hermeneutical discussion was interesting. A philosophical explication on why our first grasp of something is always a failure, but nevertheless this failure is necessary and part of a movement that just is the essence of the text.
Primal baptism of the object. Rigid designator aims towards the surplus-enjoyment of the object: that which is in the object more than the object itself. A residue of symbolization that is always left over. (pgs. 101 to 108)
Quilting point: the empty signifier (signifier without signified) that unifies an entire discourse, an embodied lack that is experienced as plenitude. "Ideological anamorphosis" is the "error of perspective" that sees the empty signifier as a plenitude. (pgs. 108-110)
Connection of Kantian morality with fascism. (pgs. 86-92). Has something to do with the empty formalism of the Law and connecting it to enjoyment (jouissance). This section deserves a re-read.
Belief prior to belief: in the context of Pascal's wager, Pascal says something like: if you merely follow the rituals and customs of religious belief, then you will believe. But being able to follow these customs requires a certain belief that comes prior to belief. I think this belief prior to belief is conditioned by custom, so there is a paradoxical constitution here. Unclear on exactly the interplay here. (pgs. 38-39)
Fantasy is the means through which desire is constituted. It is through fantasy that we learn how to desire. Fantasy is a kind of frame for desire. (pgs. 132-133).
The bits about Tom from Tom and Jerry having two bodies: the one that gets pulverized and exploded and the one that continually renews itself in the next scene as an illustration of the sublime object is some mind-bending stuff. Funny too. (pgs. 149-150)
The "Lenin in Warsaw" joke is very funny and used an illustration on how there's no metalanguage. The joke goes: There's a painting titled "Lenin in Warsaw" and the scene depicts Lenin's wife in bed with a young man from the Young Communist League. A museum patron asks the curator "Excuse me, but where is Lenin?" and the curator replies "Why, he's in Warsaw". I don't quite grasp the full contours of this example or why it is important, but something that seems to be true is it's an illustration of the subject/object relationship. The object is Lenin's being in Warsaw. The object is equated with objet petit a. The subject is the scene actually depicted, Lenin's wife in bed with the young man. The object (Lenin's being away) makes possible the subject (Lenin's wife in bed). (pgs. 177-181)
Zizek articulates subjectivation in post-structuralism as an "effect of a fundamentally non-subject process" (Pg. 197). The subject is effectuated through this being caught up in pre-subject processes such as desire or writing. Lacan's idea of subjectivation is that the subject is lack/void. If we abstract subjectivation from the effects that it's caught up in (desire, writing) what it reveals is an original lack, an original void. "...what the subjectivation masks is not a pre or trans-subjective process of writing but a lack in the structure, a lack which is the subject." (pg. 197)
Speculative philosophy obtains its meaning not immediately, but this failed first pass is part of what constitutes its truth. The bits about Hegel and reflection largely went over my head, but the hermeneutical discussion was interesting. A philosophical explication on why our first grasp of something is always a failure, but nevertheless this failure is necessary and part of a movement that just is the essence of the text.
December 10, 2021
Zizek's thesis in the book is that the differences between Lacanian psychology and Althusserian socialism should be understood as part of an Hegelian dialectic to make sense of Ideology; however, what he mainly does is re-translate Althusserian motifs into psychoanalytic terminology, and explain the very obscure logical leaps in Lacan by reference to Hegelian mediation. His primary claim appears to be that the alienation and indoctrination of the Althusserian man can be understood as a form of Lacanian paranoia, with state apparati serving as the Real and subsequent determination of fantasy and subconscious. The question then becomes the methodology of objective analysis in the face of ideological indoctrination; Zizek's solution is made by reference to Lacanian parapraxes to the real understood as the initial illusion that Hegelian epistemology describes and eventually overcomes. Consequently, the solution to ideology is relegated to the conscientious process of developing awareness of one's own alienation, and the discerning sublation of subjective phenomenon into aspects of objective understanding.
The interesting thing about Zizek's conclusion is that it is essentially the basic academic model for science (as described, even, by analytic philosophy), that is, epistemological hard-mindedness with rigor and careful evasion of biases and cultural misapprehensions. What Zizek describes would seem to require no reference to Lacan or Althusser, but it is for his audience of continental marxists and lacanians that he writes. It pans out as a mostly descriptive project highlighting the reconcilability of psychoanalysis and socialism, which is why he's more justified in using his more silly examples from Hitchcock films and Soviet jokes; however, this limitation of purpose seems to highlight even further the more fundamental difference, that is, the ambiguity of the reliability of the Lacanian model (which is justified here only by reference to de Saussure's long-refuted signified-signifier relationship) or the accuracy of the Marxist political metaphysic, which is left primarily as a presumption (and seems in general to justify its raison-d'etre negatively, by presuming the naivite&indoctrination of skeptics). As such, I'm skeptical to believe that this book really represents a meaningful contribution to political philosophy, or achieves terribly more than being an summary of Lacan populated with humorous examples and mildly interesting (but usually reductive) allusions to Hegel or Kripke (who seems to be referenced here in a very non-substantive way, invoking the Causal Chains anti-descriptivism seemingly only as a showy way to describe obscurities in definition).
The interesting thing about Zizek's conclusion is that it is essentially the basic academic model for science (as described, even, by analytic philosophy), that is, epistemological hard-mindedness with rigor and careful evasion of biases and cultural misapprehensions. What Zizek describes would seem to require no reference to Lacan or Althusser, but it is for his audience of continental marxists and lacanians that he writes. It pans out as a mostly descriptive project highlighting the reconcilability of psychoanalysis and socialism, which is why he's more justified in using his more silly examples from Hitchcock films and Soviet jokes; however, this limitation of purpose seems to highlight even further the more fundamental difference, that is, the ambiguity of the reliability of the Lacanian model (which is justified here only by reference to de Saussure's long-refuted signified-signifier relationship) or the accuracy of the Marxist political metaphysic, which is left primarily as a presumption (and seems in general to justify its raison-d'etre negatively, by presuming the naivite&indoctrination of skeptics). As such, I'm skeptical to believe that this book really represents a meaningful contribution to political philosophy, or achieves terribly more than being an summary of Lacan populated with humorous examples and mildly interesting (but usually reductive) allusions to Hegel or Kripke (who seems to be referenced here in a very non-substantive way, invoking the Causal Chains anti-descriptivism seemingly only as a showy way to describe obscurities in definition).
October 9, 2022
There is no story about the story for the world we live in. Trump gets that. He is the ultimate post-modernist who exploits that defect in the matrix that we live in.
MAGA Republicans are fascist and their feelings about their feelings get sated from the incoherent babblings of their leader. Zizek understands fascism and he is prescient as he writes in 1989 for what was to happen in America in 2016 with the reawakening of the MAGA American monster longing to be poked and taping into their core racist, misogynist, antisemitic and anti-scientific beliefs.
As Zizek says, it’s the ideology that is important not the policy or the results. The retribution and revenge of imagined wrongs for its own sake is what drives them to their special place of hate. About 45% of the country has this hate and distrusts science or thinks any election they lose is an unfair election and outsource their desires of their desires to an authoritarian.
Zizek actually really gets what drives the MAGA Republicans. Seriously, though aren’t almost all elected Republicans MAGAs thus rendering the term MAGA Republicans redundant? Zizek gets that it is the illusion of power itself that is the ultimate end in itself for today’s Republicans. Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ in the end is that our desires about our desires are driven by an illusion created by who we outsource it to. Nietzsche wanted it to be Napoleon, Oswald Spengler wanted it to be Caesar or Napoleon, the Nazis thought it should be Hitler, and MAGA Republicans want it to be Trump and only Trump as if he is anointed by God.
Zizek said that the Jew must exist in order for the fascists to be. That’s why I added ‘antisemitic’ to MAGA’s core beliefs. There must be a mysterious ‘other’ with ‘otherness’ for the hate to really manifest itself. There must be a secretness to that otherness such that they must only appear to be like the fellow MAGA purists but with super-secret characteristics different from MAGA purists.
The crazy needs to make legitimate news into ‘fake news’ and have no respect for facts or science, and the only narrative that exist is the one the fascist leader tells them, and their can only be one fascist leader, and today that is Trump. The ultimate post-modernist who has embraced the ugliness such that he becomes the narrative about the narrative, the overriding central authority, thus ironically becoming the kernel of truth and negating the post-modernist narrative itself. Kernel is a word Zizek uses frequently and it also can mean essence.
Zizek will say that Hegel’s absolute is universally discoverable, while Fichte thinks we must first ‘feign’ the truth then we can discover it, and Feuerbach says we create our own God and make him ours. The facticity of the world we are thrown into creates our background that shines light on our foreground, and it is up to us to find our own meaning and stay away from the purveyors of falsehoods, science-deniers, antisemites, bigots and their ilk. MAGA hat Republicans have no one to blame for their own stupidity but themselves.
Zizek takes Lacan seriously. That is always a mistake. For Lacan, the unknown signifier is as real as the thing itself such that the lack of phallic in a woman is as real as the phallic in the man thus signifying the truth for womanhood, and Zizek will make Marx’s commodity of labor foundational to all worth and the starting point of all value. Zizek thinks the essence of the form exist beyond its content and creates signifiers as the only real.
Power is only real when the subject sublimates to the authority. Power is the illusion that only exist if we say it is real. The ‘king has no clothes’ only if we foolishly stick our heads up to get it chopped off. Zizek brings that king fable up many times in this story. Our truths are what we decide for them to be. Our yes is because of what we make of it.
Zizek noted that the word ‘subject’ can be a servant of the state (king) or also the interior part of us, and that the subject/object dichotomy can be as between a king and his subjects, or between our inner self and our outer self.
I cringe when I hear MAGA Republicans speak of the superior qualities of those they hate such as Jews or highlight the separateness of transgender people. They must first separate them and make them special before they can annihilate them. Zizek gets that and tells a lot of funny jokes in this book that shows why the fascists or communists must create the other. Hanna Arendt rightly lumped fascist and communists together in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism.
I didn’t find this book as great philosophy or a must-re-read book because after all he took Lacan seriously and that mars any book. I enjoy books such as this one that are written by somebody who has read a lot of the same books that I have, and understands them at a more subtle level than I’m capable of. If you are torn between reading this book or Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus I would recommend Deleuze’s book instead. The themes are similar and Deleuze is definitely a book that you would want to reread.
MAGA Republicans are fascist and their feelings about their feelings get sated from the incoherent babblings of their leader. Zizek understands fascism and he is prescient as he writes in 1989 for what was to happen in America in 2016 with the reawakening of the MAGA American monster longing to be poked and taping into their core racist, misogynist, antisemitic and anti-scientific beliefs.
As Zizek says, it’s the ideology that is important not the policy or the results. The retribution and revenge of imagined wrongs for its own sake is what drives them to their special place of hate. About 45% of the country has this hate and distrusts science or thinks any election they lose is an unfair election and outsource their desires of their desires to an authoritarian.
Zizek actually really gets what drives the MAGA Republicans. Seriously, though aren’t almost all elected Republicans MAGAs thus rendering the term MAGA Republicans redundant? Zizek gets that it is the illusion of power itself that is the ultimate end in itself for today’s Republicans. Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ in the end is that our desires about our desires are driven by an illusion created by who we outsource it to. Nietzsche wanted it to be Napoleon, Oswald Spengler wanted it to be Caesar or Napoleon, the Nazis thought it should be Hitler, and MAGA Republicans want it to be Trump and only Trump as if he is anointed by God.
Zizek said that the Jew must exist in order for the fascists to be. That’s why I added ‘antisemitic’ to MAGA’s core beliefs. There must be a mysterious ‘other’ with ‘otherness’ for the hate to really manifest itself. There must be a secretness to that otherness such that they must only appear to be like the fellow MAGA purists but with super-secret characteristics different from MAGA purists.
The crazy needs to make legitimate news into ‘fake news’ and have no respect for facts or science, and the only narrative that exist is the one the fascist leader tells them, and their can only be one fascist leader, and today that is Trump. The ultimate post-modernist who has embraced the ugliness such that he becomes the narrative about the narrative, the overriding central authority, thus ironically becoming the kernel of truth and negating the post-modernist narrative itself. Kernel is a word Zizek uses frequently and it also can mean essence.
Zizek will say that Hegel’s absolute is universally discoverable, while Fichte thinks we must first ‘feign’ the truth then we can discover it, and Feuerbach says we create our own God and make him ours. The facticity of the world we are thrown into creates our background that shines light on our foreground, and it is up to us to find our own meaning and stay away from the purveyors of falsehoods, science-deniers, antisemites, bigots and their ilk. MAGA hat Republicans have no one to blame for their own stupidity but themselves.
Zizek takes Lacan seriously. That is always a mistake. For Lacan, the unknown signifier is as real as the thing itself such that the lack of phallic in a woman is as real as the phallic in the man thus signifying the truth for womanhood, and Zizek will make Marx’s commodity of labor foundational to all worth and the starting point of all value. Zizek thinks the essence of the form exist beyond its content and creates signifiers as the only real.
Power is only real when the subject sublimates to the authority. Power is the illusion that only exist if we say it is real. The ‘king has no clothes’ only if we foolishly stick our heads up to get it chopped off. Zizek brings that king fable up many times in this story. Our truths are what we decide for them to be. Our yes is because of what we make of it.
Zizek noted that the word ‘subject’ can be a servant of the state (king) or also the interior part of us, and that the subject/object dichotomy can be as between a king and his subjects, or between our inner self and our outer self.
I cringe when I hear MAGA Republicans speak of the superior qualities of those they hate such as Jews or highlight the separateness of transgender people. They must first separate them and make them special before they can annihilate them. Zizek gets that and tells a lot of funny jokes in this book that shows why the fascists or communists must create the other. Hanna Arendt rightly lumped fascist and communists together in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism.
I didn’t find this book as great philosophy or a must-re-read book because after all he took Lacan seriously and that mars any book. I enjoy books such as this one that are written by somebody who has read a lot of the same books that I have, and understands them at a more subtle level than I’m capable of. If you are torn between reading this book or Deleuze’s Anti-Oedipus I would recommend Deleuze’s book instead. The themes are similar and Deleuze is definitely a book that you would want to reread.
November 16, 2018
Bastante interesante, pero necesito adquirir más conocimientos sobre psicoanálisis.
April 30, 2021
Totally over my head. I keep trying to read philosophy without having much of a base to understand what they are talking about. But Zizek’s jokes and examples are a lot of fun.
May 28, 2017
That people find Zizek incomprehensible I find incomprehensible. Hegel/Lacan 2016!!
August 7, 2020
As I had mentioned a few weeks ago, prior to reading The Sublime Object of Ideology I was "scared" to actually start reading it. This fear persisted while reading, and remained in spite of finishing it. Nonetheless, I didn't dislike the book. The problem I got however with Zizek's first book, is, as many others have argued, that as opposed to reading Zizek to eventually understand Marx, Hegel, and Lacan, you should actually read the late philosophers to understand Zizek's work.
I found Zizek's ideas sometimes difficult to grasp, to the extent that I stopped reading and blamed myself for misunderstanding his theories. After reading (only) 40 books (primarily non-fiction), I should acknowledge the fact that I am not always the one to blame for not understanding certain ideas. A particular cognitive bias called the curse of knowledge partially gives us the answer for our failure to grasp (certain) scientific of philosophical ideas. The curse of knowledge suggests that the individual who transmits the message (that would be Zizek in this case) unknowingly assumes that the individual who receives the message (that would be us, the readers) already possess the necessary knowledge to be able to understand the sender (Zizek) their argument, idea or theory. For instance, from the start, Zizek assumes you are aware of Irma's dream that is mentioned in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.
This--not taking into account the possible lack of knowledge of the reader--is certainly not uncommon with non-fiction books. However, that does not make it any less frustrating to look up the information yourself (which is not the largest burden in the 21st century, but you get the point). This has not been always the case though. There have been times where I experienced the satisfaction of understanding a certain point Zizek was making, with regards to an existing idea (from another author/book) without him needing to explain it. Unfortunately, these moments are infrequent for the relatively inexperienced reader. So, for the time being, I'll put The Sublime Object of Ideology on my 'rereading list'.
I found Zizek's ideas sometimes difficult to grasp, to the extent that I stopped reading and blamed myself for misunderstanding his theories. After reading (only) 40 books (primarily non-fiction), I should acknowledge the fact that I am not always the one to blame for not understanding certain ideas. A particular cognitive bias called the curse of knowledge partially gives us the answer for our failure to grasp (certain) scientific of philosophical ideas. The curse of knowledge suggests that the individual who transmits the message (that would be Zizek in this case) unknowingly assumes that the individual who receives the message (that would be us, the readers) already possess the necessary knowledge to be able to understand the sender (Zizek) their argument, idea or theory. For instance, from the start, Zizek assumes you are aware of Irma's dream that is mentioned in Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams.
This--not taking into account the possible lack of knowledge of the reader--is certainly not uncommon with non-fiction books. However, that does not make it any less frustrating to look up the information yourself (which is not the largest burden in the 21st century, but you get the point). This has not been always the case though. There have been times where I experienced the satisfaction of understanding a certain point Zizek was making, with regards to an existing idea (from another author/book) without him needing to explain it. Unfortunately, these moments are infrequent for the relatively inexperienced reader. So, for the time being, I'll put The Sublime Object of Ideology on my 'rereading list'.
January 9, 2012
It's common knowledge that Zizek is frequently at his best while recounting jokes in order to illustrate a philosophical concept, and the dirtier the jokes the better.
What do I have to add to that? Well a belief that Zizek is simply at his best when he is writing. Lately he has been hitting the streets, giving interviews, talking to anyone who will listen—notably crowds at Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street protests—to his ideas on capitalism, ideology, and the way forward. His speeches aren't bad, but when you read his prose, that's when you see the kind of thinking of which he is capable. This book, while not without its problems—at points it is simply overwrought to the point of confusion—delivers powerful critiques of ideology again and again. For those less interested in continental philosophy or the finer points of Lacanian psychoanalysis, there are sections that will drag. But Zizek has a gift for making difficult topics engaging, for making difficult positions persuasive, and for being Slovenian.
In any case, I've known for a while I needed to read this book. I'm glad I did. At the very least, it didn't hold back on the jokes!
What do I have to add to that? Well a belief that Zizek is simply at his best when he is writing. Lately he has been hitting the streets, giving interviews, talking to anyone who will listen—notably crowds at Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street protests—to his ideas on capitalism, ideology, and the way forward. His speeches aren't bad, but when you read his prose, that's when you see the kind of thinking of which he is capable. This book, while not without its problems—at points it is simply overwrought to the point of confusion—delivers powerful critiques of ideology again and again. For those less interested in continental philosophy or the finer points of Lacanian psychoanalysis, there are sections that will drag. But Zizek has a gift for making difficult topics engaging, for making difficult positions persuasive, and for being Slovenian.
In any case, I've known for a while I needed to read this book. I'm glad I did. At the very least, it didn't hold back on the jokes!
February 25, 2023
‘I am aware that I have no understanding of Hegel and Lacan, but I read this anyway’ would be the way I’d construe Žižek’s ‘They know that, in their activity, they are following an illusion, but still, they are doing it’. I know Žižek has a bit of a reputation for being diffuse and unfocused... sadly I have to agree.
December 1, 2018
Better as a jokebook than as a work of original philosophy
December 23, 2018
this is the biggest headache of a book i’ve ever read, but i now finally understand why žižek is the way he is. the og galaxy brain
Read
May 15, 2019Olen kindel, et pean selle juurde tulema aastate pärast tagasi. Hetkel vaid maitsesin teda, kuid eriti alla midagi neelata ei suutnud.
June 19, 2023
Pido perdón por saltarme las 5 últimas páginas, pero me perdí en las tesis hegelianas del sujeto y de la reflexión externa, postulativa y determinada.
Es el mejor libro de Zizek? Por su densidad y por ser el primero en el que enuncia de manera sistemática su lectura lacaniana de Hegel y de la relevancia de Lacan para la crítica de la ideología, pues sí. Me gustó? Diría que sí, porque ya había leído a Zizek, de modo que ya me habitué a su estilo y a su modo de proceder, pero ni cagando lo recomiendo como primer acercamiento ni a Lacan, ni a Hegel ni a Zizek lui-même.
De todos modos, da gusto saber que Zizekno es el rockstar delirante que muchas veces se ve en Youtube o en redes sociales, sino que es un lacaniano puro y duro, defensor de tesis sólidas y un agudísimo lector (no en el sentido anglo scholar, sino que es alguien que puede elaborar tesis propias respecto a quienes lee).
Me gusta sentir que con Zizek-Lacan se da lo que dice Agamben de sí mismo sobre la felicidad de la filosofía: enunciar tesis que sus autores favoritos formularon a medias o mantuvieron en silencio para, así, postular un espacio de indiferenciación intelectual entre lo "propio" y lo "ajeno": un espacio filosófico asubjetivo donde no hay apropiación, sino que solo uso de las ideas.
Es el mejor libro de Zizek? Por su densidad y por ser el primero en el que enuncia de manera sistemática su lectura lacaniana de Hegel y de la relevancia de Lacan para la crítica de la ideología, pues sí. Me gustó? Diría que sí, porque ya había leído a Zizek, de modo que ya me habitué a su estilo y a su modo de proceder, pero ni cagando lo recomiendo como primer acercamiento ni a Lacan, ni a Hegel ni a Zizek lui-même.
De todos modos, da gusto saber que Zizekno es el rockstar delirante que muchas veces se ve en Youtube o en redes sociales, sino que es un lacaniano puro y duro, defensor de tesis sólidas y un agudísimo lector (no en el sentido anglo scholar, sino que es alguien que puede elaborar tesis propias respecto a quienes lee).
Me gusta sentir que con Zizek-Lacan se da lo que dice Agamben de sí mismo sobre la felicidad de la filosofía: enunciar tesis que sus autores favoritos formularon a medias o mantuvieron en silencio para, así, postular un espacio de indiferenciación intelectual entre lo "propio" y lo "ajeno": un espacio filosófico asubjetivo donde no hay apropiación, sino que solo uso de las ideas.
December 25, 2023
no way dasha and anna read this
July 29, 2023
Del TFM a una teoría sobre el significado. No escapo de Barthes ni cuando descanso
November 30, 2010
Odd to come at this after having already read a fair amount of Zizek (Parallax View, Desert of the Real, Violence, Enjoy Your Symptom!, Plague of Fantasies, chunks of Puppet and the Dwarf): everything new is old again. Key Zizekian concepts first (?) articulated here include interpassivity and the subject/object supposed to believe; the desire to abolish contradiction in a rational totality as fascist; antisemitism and jealousy over the unified pleasure of the other; and the other as subject supposed to enjoy; the sublime nothing as the radical thing-in-itself; "cynical reason" as already accounted for in ideology and capitalism; the obscene sustaining excess of the Law; "fantasy is on the side of reality"; retroactively changing the past in a standard psychoanalytic reversal of cause and effect; quilting points; anamorphis; renunciation and surplus enjoyment; and etc. Baring the thick reading of Hegel in the last chapter, it's all familiar. That's fine.
Strikes me now that Zizek's method is primarily phenomenological: how does it (in his case, Das Ding rather than, say, a table) appear to consciousness, specifically, HUMAN consciousness (there's no sense in Zizek of von Uexküll's ever having existed: he remains a humanist or at least an anthropocentrist through and through). There may be a Real out there, but he's ultimately concerned with the internal, constitutive alienation of human (primarily male) pretensions to identity. And his approach would work equally well whether that human had just woke up in a blank white room or if that human were in a crowd or if that human contained a (intestinal bacteriological) crowd. So that's a problem. Second problem: the Hegelian method, as a method of binaries, only inadequately describes actually existing networked processes of change. My saying this of course is the voice of my recent reading in Latour and Harman, but there you go. I'm interested in a world bigger than the one I find in my head.
Strikes me now that Zizek's method is primarily phenomenological: how does it (in his case, Das Ding rather than, say, a table) appear to consciousness, specifically, HUMAN consciousness (there's no sense in Zizek of von Uexküll's ever having existed: he remains a humanist or at least an anthropocentrist through and through). There may be a Real out there, but he's ultimately concerned with the internal, constitutive alienation of human (primarily male) pretensions to identity. And his approach would work equally well whether that human had just woke up in a blank white room or if that human were in a crowd or if that human contained a (intestinal bacteriological) crowd. So that's a problem. Second problem: the Hegelian method, as a method of binaries, only inadequately describes actually existing networked processes of change. My saying this of course is the voice of my recent reading in Latour and Harman, but there you go. I'm interested in a world bigger than the one I find in my head.
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