ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of Žižek’s ideology theory structured through Lacanian categories of subjectivity. It mainly looks at Žižek’s major works from 1989 to 1999, such as The Sublime Object of Ideology and The Ticklish Subject. It begins by analysing the central concepts of Žižek’s Lacanian method, such as the Real and drive, and how these point to a dialectical potential inherent in subjectivity. However, the conscious aspect of ideology for Žižek is still more an effect of unconscious attachment and fantasy, so ideological change means subjects facing the contingency rather than falsity of their beliefs. The analysis thus stresses the mutual influence between conscious rationalisation, fantasy and attachment, and how contradictions between belief and experience are rationalised to maintain the attachment. Next, Žižek’s notions of ideological ‘fetish’ and ‘disavowal’ are explored, or how subjects contradict conscious values with their behaviour, which represents their underlying desire, rendering a critique of values ineffective. This section demonstrates that rationalisation is the way in which subjects justify discrepancies between values and behaviour, or the conscious reasoning that disavowal still requires. With this idea, it shows how various ideologies described by Žižek remain susceptible to critique, and again develops the ideology map.
