ABSTRACT
According to Slavoj Zizek, when people engage in everyday consumption, they wade through ideology. Zizek understands ideology not as top-down explicit political discourses, but as a subtle affair where everyday preferences and spontaneities are implicated in a libidinal and narcissistic economy. Epistemologically, Zizek accepts Jacques Lacan's formula that the unconscious is structured as a language and therefore much of his gigantic oeuvre should be read as interpretation. For Zizek the point when people accept the injunction is the point of our interpellation as consumers, but it is an interpellation that comes with a twist. It is not necessary for consumers to make naive identifications with their objects of consumption, and to actually believe that the authentic fulfilment will be found in their next Coca-Cola. The broader context of why ideology works this way is, Zizek argues, found in the collapse of the performative power of ruling ideology.
