\u2018The stepping out of (what we experience as) ideology is the very form of our enslavement to it\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Ideology has nothing to do with \u201cillusion\u201d, with a mistaken, distorted representation of its social content\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The starting point of the critique of ideology has to be full acknowledgment of the fact that it is easily possible\u00a0to lie in the guise of truth<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Every ideology attaches itself to some kernel of\u00a0jouissance<\/em>\u00a0which, however, retains the status of an ambiguous excess\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The last support of the ideological effect (of the way an ideological network of signifiers \u201cholds\u201d us) is the non-sensical, pre-ideological kernel of enjoyment\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018An ideological identification exerts a true hold on us precisely when we maintain an awareness that we are not fully identical to it, that there is a rich human person beneath it: \u201cnot all is ideology, beneath the ideological mask I am also a human person\u201d is\u00a0the very form if ideology<\/em>, of its \u201cpractical efficiency\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The form of consciousness that fits late-capitalist \u201cpost-ideological\u201d society \u2013 the cynical, \u201csober\u201d attitude that advocates liberal \u201copenness\u201d in the matter of \u201copinions\u201d (everybody is free to believe whatever she or he wants; this concerns only his or her privacy), disregards pathetic ideological phrases, and follows only utilitarian and\/or hedonistic motivations \u2013\u00a0stricto sensu<\/em>\u00a0remains an ideological attitude: it involves a series of ideological presuppositions (on the relationship between \u201cvalues\u201d and \u201creal life\u201d, on personal freedom, etc.) that are necessary for the reproduction of existing social relations\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018A gesture which draws the line of separation between \u201creal problems\u201d and \u201cideological chimeras\u201d is, from Plato onwards, the very founding gesture of ideology: ideology is by definition self-referential \u2013 that is, it establishes itself by assuming a distance towards (what it denounces as) \u201cmere ideology\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The fundamental level of ideology is not of an illusion masking the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuring our social reality itself. And at this level, we are of course far from being a post-ideological society. Cynical distance is just one way \u2013 one of many ways \u2013 to blind ourselves to the structuring power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironic distance,\u00a0we are still doing them<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Objet petit a<\/em>\u00a0is the \u201csublime object of ideology\u201d: it serves as the fantasmatic support of ideological propositions\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The \u201csublime object of ideology\u201d is the spectral object which has no positive ontological consistency, but merely fills in the gap of a certain constitutive impossibility\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The highest form of ideology lies not in getting caught in ideological spectrality, forgetting about its foundations in real people and their relations, but precisely in overlooking this Real of spectrality, and pretending to address directly \u201creal people with their real worries\u201d. Visitors to the London Stock Exchange are given a free leaflet which explains to them that the stock market is not about some mysterious fluctuations, but about real people and their products \u2013\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0is ideology at its purest\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018In everyday life, ideology is at work especially in the apparently innocent reference to pure utility\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018The stepping out of (what we experience as) ideology is the very form of our enslavement to it\u2019 \u2018Ideology has nothing to do with \u201cillusion\u201d, with a mistaken, distorted representation of its social content\u2019 \u2018The starting point of the critique of ideology has to be full acknowledgment of the fact that it is easily possible\u00a0to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":742,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-23","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.cardiff.ac.uk\/zizekcentre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}