Notes on Zizek’s, Sublime object of Ideology

The Symptom

Symptom, as defined by Freud- “A symptom, is a sign of, and a substitute for an instinctual satisfaction what has remained in abeyance; it is a consequence of the process of repression” The Latent thought of a dream is driven by repressed thought, and therefore the symptom

Zizek thinks this is flawed as latent thought is not the key to understanding human nature or the subject. Zizek says we must understand the form in which the subject exists. Why do latent thoughts even exist and why are they suppressed? Why the framework- of suppressed thought then appearing in dream.

This extends to commodities. Zizek believes not to work out why we value or care about commodities but why do commodities take the form they do- why a system of such abstractions

Critique of kantian theory of value AND freudian psychoanalysis.

Symbolic Orders/ Structures

The Lacanian construct of the symbolic order enters through language and shapes the laws of our desires and beliefs controlling these desires and beliefs through symbols and language. It completely shapes our communication but in structure it shapes our Ideology. (Through the symbolic, the real and the imaginary.) see lacanian google doc.

Zizek speaking on Symbolic Order is a system in a mode of communication. e.g Language, discourse, methods of monetary exchange, and rules within a governing system. AKA l’Autre. Or the symbolic In what lacan called the symbolic order,

At the heart of the lacan symbolic order the superego is ultimately the largest communicator. If the symbolic order structures our lives and our conception of reality, what influences these super structures- Zizek claims ideology is what is at the top of the symbolic order hierarchy.

Sublime objects AND Ideology

The super-ego, Acceptability, Morality, Ideals. Suppressed by the Ego and the Id

With the reinforcement of the superego, the big other and ideology together we see another factor in this very reinforcement itself is the very Mechanisms Of Sublime Subjects AND even more significantly, Sublime Objects Of Ideology.

There isn’t one sublime object of Ideology, many exist WITHIN ideology. A sublime isn’t a thing but it can be represented by an object. The US constitution being a sublime object. Zizek says the USSR communist party is a sublime object of ideology. Everything that happens in US politics is a direct result of the constitution. It laid down the ideology. It is the very framework which political institutions are swayed.

They operate as overton windows, they shift the acceptable mode of communications as overton windows shift the acceptable realms of ideas. Sublime objects of ideology adjust the very parameters in which Ideology can operate from.More importantly the parameters which you live within and the parameters in which the mode of how we communicate is shaped.

Abstract form of Commodity-Form, Zizek really rejects all previous attempts to try and figure out the value of something within those forms, he tries to work out the fundamental framework. The marxist idea of Labor, Exchange value, Desire and Use Value are not seen as important but he acknowledges them as correct but seeks further into the framework of these commodities.

If labour is the value of a commodity we turn labour into an abstraction of sorts, further, workers are looked at as an abstraction and there may be symptoms of systemic issues here for example disregard for workers, pressure to increase productivity without higher wages. Showing the fetishising of commodities in the true ideological core of the system itself.

The abstraction of the worker and the commodity within a social structure, is what raises the symptoms in the same way the Big Other or the Symbolic raises the real or the imaginary in psychoanalysis. Through our ideologically biased conception of the Abstraction or the Big Other respectively is how the symptoms come about.

Money is just paper, yet even most people realise this, people also notice it is obviously more than just that. But it is simultaneously all powerful and nothing but paper therefore money, capital and commodities does hold the power of a sublime object of ideology. Some people exist to serve capital through career gain. If this is rejected you are entertaining a similar form of ideology. Ideological modes of viewing the world are baked into our consciousness.

The most abstract of commodities. The physical makeup of money is analyzed to be powerful but at the end of the day the important thing is that people continue to pretend that it isn’t just paper, therefore entertaining ideology. They ritualize themselves within the ideological framework they live in. You can never pretend it is simply just paper. It is the ultimate sublime object. It supersedes rationality and is all powerful. Back to the abstraction of the workers, the labour within that system is vapid. The market and social structures exist homogeneously with human psychoanalysis. We become more socialised as we interact within a market. If we are consciously aware of these exchanges, processes simply aren’t ideology anymore. “This non-knowledge of reality is a part of it’s very essence”. Understanding of our non-understanding of the abstractions that compass our lives. if the essence of our reality is being blind to the reality of sublime objects, the abstract interactions, the psychoanalytic within market structures we completely lose reality, it ceases to exist at that point.

False consciousness is not Ideology. It is a social reality, how we interact and function. Ideology is the consciousness itself in a way. To even escape and combat ideology, is a form of ideology itself. These ideological fissures within the ideology itself are what raise symptoms. Ultimately everything we see on a symbolic level is ideology as we are made up of ideology.

Paradoxes.

Zizek uses freedom. Freedom to sell labour on the market is enslavement to capital. This paradoxical freedom, the form of its opposite is what closes the circle of ‘bourgeois freedoms”. You are ultimately free to sell yourself to slavery. Pre-Capitalist societies existed. By participating in freedom we enter the pipeline of deeper and deeper serving capital via labour. If we refuse this, we are poor within the system and cannot survive. Not freedom. The paradoxes bring the symptoms into infruition.

Cynicism as Ideology

On starbucks, Zizek says “Our cappuccinos are a little bit more expensive but some of the money goes the stupid Guatemalan children or some forest, isnt this wonderful? The message is we no longer have the old view of “you are a consumer” but you should also be a good citizen. NO. The price for good social conscious and care, solidarity is included into the commodity itself. So this immobilizing cynicism is ideology at its purest today.”

It’s not that people do not know they are blind to ideology and do not know that they are completely succumbed to ideology. Ultimately they cynically believe they are seeing past ideology and that it really isn’t all that important. Therefore instead of being in the lens but blind, They believe they are above the lens- “they do not know it, but they are doing it” — Marx but Zizek believes cynicism is to blame for people thinking that ideology is a “glass to look through” that distorts our view on reality. Zizek claims it is our natural state and to see the truth you have to put it on the glass.

Totalitarian Laughter is a concept brought up. The result of becoming really principled and adhering to that linear set of good. As life’s situations are elastic we see that the result some people take is to completely become dogmatic to the structural good they so claim to have. That ultimately there will not be any compromise in the name of good, thus an ideological tendency.

We should not take the status quo ideology so seriously as ultimately we may lose our ability to adapt and therefore run into a situation where the ends justify the means and that could be considered paradoxically evil. Zizek points out another paradoxical point. In states with robust systems of authority, Zizek noticed a surface-level mockery of this system. Zizek says the result of this is the general population not taking the status quo ideology seriously and that in itself is dangerous. The general attitude to jobs and the government stems from a cynical totalitarian laughter in the west. The attitude of authoritarian systems is something ultimately feeble or weak and not taken seriously leads to totalitarian actions from the status quo that is rejected. Status quo authoritarian ideology is not taken seriously, leading to such as federal armies getting involved in protest. Doing and unknowing simply due to cynical totalitarian laughter.

Lacanian interaction

Unlike Freud and Lacan, Zizek believes fantasy takes form in the external, not the suppressed internal. Actions surrounding our behavior is ultimately our fantasy. Money is just a physical piece of paper, social activity proves otherwise. In what they are doing they are “Fetisihists in practice not in theory”. This fantasy is not illusory because we act it out in reality, therefore, making it external in its manifestation. The prior Lacanian view of belief being interior but knowledge being exterior (as knowledge can be tested from the exterior) what we see with a belief is something radically exterior as it shapes how we interact. Belief frames the objective of the exterior. What we are symbolically told to believe also comes from the exterior, not the interior belief.

The Lacanian other is the central desire in our lives. The desire of the Other is the desire of the ultimate other. The social norms etc. Through the other, we can say that we enjoyed or experienced something we never did. A laughing track on a TV show is used. It replaces the desire externally as we claim to have enjoyed the show without laughing once.

Split Subjects.

The ending section. The Zizekian split subject. People are always split between their unconscious and their conscious in shaping the way in which we shape the real. The real is void. Nothing. It is a plain in which the plain is shone and formed onto. The real is impossible to even imagine and is built up by the split subject, the symbolic and the imaginary which all haunt the day-to-day subjectivity. The reality we perceive is built up from the real and the laws of ideology lay the groundwork for even desire, in which the frame of ideology laws are split, those that suppress our innate pleasure for the good of society. Others that are not written down but are socially accepted, ones where the superego is constantly working out what’s ok and not ok you are therefore built up by ideology. The very sublime objects placed in front of you shape your subjectivity and the way in which you perceive and portray yourself.