ABSTRACT
This chapter examines several post-Lacanian contributions to the theory and analysis of ideology. It traces the ways in which Lacanian concepts have been used to examine certain key characteristics of ideological forms, and focuses critically upon some of the broader theoretical assumptions which inform these efforts to reconfigure the subject and society. Through an appropriation of psychoanalysis, developed through the spectacles of Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser's theory highlights that processes of social change are never the simple unfolding of 'objective contradictions'. Althusser's subject of ideology is caught within the symbolic order as a self-reproducing object of domination. Ideology provides an idealized vision of a 'society' which in reality cannot exist. Feminist practices and modes of expression reflect a range of interests, such as the need for recognition, independence, and autonomy, which have been systematically distorted and crippled by the patriarchal sexual and social order of modern societies.
