ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the author's exposition of Zizek's critical theory. It deals with his descriptive social theory, and it fully lay out its systematic philosophical underpinnings. The book attempts authors' critique of Zizek's theoretical project, and its political implications. It argues that Zizek is to be read as someone whose theoretical intervention is structured around an attempt to regenerate the notion of 'ideology'. The book expounds the central tenets which Zizek thinks enable psychoanalysis to do work in political theory, centering around the post-Althusserian notion that ideologies 'hail' subjects, calling them into an understanding of their relation to the world. It also looks at Zizek's typology of different historical forms of ideological system and suggests that Zizek works with what can be called through a distant reference to Max Weber three 'ideal types' of ideological hegemony; traditional/pre-modern, totalitarian, and capitalist-consumerist.
