ABSTRACT
At the end of the Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek moves away from a literal discussion of the sublime into a larger discussion of ideology based on Hegelian philosophy. In his assessment, Zizek reduces the mother to a coy figure who manipulates others through her victimization and sacrifice. Zizek's assessment implies that the mother is everywhere complicit in her "imaginary identification" but does not consider the very real conditions of existence for the mother. Like Zizek, much of the theory used in this book, written most often by white men, either reiterates a negative image of the mother as Zizek does or avoids the mother altogether. Edelman shows his preference for the reproduction of language, a patriarchal construct, over the actual reproducing body of a woman. In reality, the problem of feminism is that it has in some ways done what it set out to do: made gender and sex discrimination more visible.
