Slavoj Zzizek's political philosophy

Writing is originally published in landscapes. com

*The criticism of ideology as <x0 false consciousness”.

In a way that oddly reminds you of Nietzsche, Zzizek generally presents his work in a controversial style, deliberately hitting against that perceived particle of opinion. One of the missing features of Zzizek's work is its continued protection and use of the subx0>ideology”>. According to the classic Marxist definition, ideologies are legislations that promote false ideas (or “false conscience”) to subjects, or subjects, on the political regimes in which they live. However, since these ideas are believed by subjects as true, they are helped to reproduce existing status, in a precise instance of what Umberto Eco calls “la forza is proved false toco” The power of falsehood. To criticize ideology, according to this position, it is necessary that you bring forth the truth (or truths) from the ground below that ideologies hide from the knowledge of subjects. Then, this theory says, subjects will be aware of the political failures of their current regimes and will be able and will be encouraged to improve them. As Zzizhak points out in his early works, this classic Marxian concept of ideology has fallen more than once prey to theoretical attacks. At first, criticising a talk as ideological involves access to a Truth about political things, a Truth that ideologies, as false, try to hide. But in human science, it has been widely debated about whether there can be a sound, theoretical truth. Second, the notion of ideology is considered inappropriate and unconventional to describe the present sociopolitical life, due to the growing importance of those that Jurgen Habermas calls “sub-systems maneuvered by the Meds” (trad, public and private bureaucracy), and also because of the widespread cynicism of today's subjects has confronted political authorities. For ideologies to have political significance, critics comment, the subjects would have to have a level of confidence in public institutions, ideals and politicians -- something that today's liberal-cosmopolite subjects lack. The wide fame the left-minded authors enjoy names like Michael Moore and Noah Chomsky, for example, testifies to how well they can get to know what Moore calls the “the awesome truth” the terrible truth and still behave as if they were not aware of it.

Zzizek agrees with critics about this “false consciousness” model of ideology. And yet, he insists that we are not living in a post-ideological world, as such different personalities as Tony Blair, Daniel Bell or Richard Rorty say. Instead, Zzizek claims that in order to understand today's policies, we need a different concept of ideology.

In a typical, bold twist, the position that Giszek defends is that the broad consensus of our day regarding the fact that our world is post-ideological, gives voice to what he calls the imagination “archideology”. Since the ideology since Marks ' day has had negative color, no one involved in such ideology has believed that dogs lied so badly, Jzizeku comments. If the word “ideology” makes any sense, ideological positions are something people attribute to the Others (to the left of our day, political right is the victim of a noble lie about the natural community, or the other; for the right, the left is the victim of the benevolent but untropic egalitarianism, destined to lead to economic and moral collapse, and so on).

For subjects to believe in an ideology, it must be presented to them and accepted as really unideological, such as Truth and Truth, and as something that anyone with some sensitivity would believe. Zzizek is aware of the realistic suggestion that there is no more efficient political gesture than to declare a controversial issue beyond any political debate. Just as the third “ ” is said to be post-ideological, or that national security is declared as something extrapolitical, Zzizek insists that the ideologies are presented by their supporters as legalism on the Sentes, which are too sacred to be desecrated by politics.

So also the bold introduction of «The sub-entitlement of ideology» is to claim that ideology today, not that it has disappeared from the political landscape, but that it has come out on its own. It is because of this success that Zzizek insists, ideology has been successfully expelled from accepted theoretical and political opinions.

Cynicism and Ideal Faith

Today's typical subjects of the first world, according to Zzizhek, are victims of what he calls “ideological democracy”. Using the ideas of German political theory, Sloterdijk insists that the formula that describes the ideology operation today is not “they don't know, but are doing it”, Marks said. Today it's “they know, but they still do it”. If this looks like absurdity from the classic Marxist perspective, Zzizek's position is that this cynicism, however, shows the deepest efficiency of political ideology “per than”. Ideals, as well as political discourses, exist to ensure willful approval or what La Boétie called Servitude Volontaire people's on policies or controversial political agreements. However, Zzizek continues, the subjects would agree to follow one or the other willingly only if they believed that, by doing so, they were expressing their free subjectivism and could have acted differently.

As false as this sense of freedom may be, Zzizek insists, however, that it is a political instance of what Hegel calls an appearance or appearance Essential (Escentual application). Althusser's understanding of ideological identification suggests that an individual “is completely replaced” in a country within a specific political system by the system's dominant ideology and ideological instruments. However, Zzizek opposes this concept by recuperating from Lulcanian psychalysis and says it is a mistake to think that, in order for a political position to gain the support of the people, it must rid people of mentally, transforming them into irrational automates. Instead, Zzizek insists that any successful political ideology always allows subjects to have and enjoy a conscious distance across its own experimental ideals and prefixings with another technical term, “ideological identity”.

Again, by weighting Lakan's psychal theory within political theory, Zzizek insists that the subject's attitude toward authority, revealed by modern - day ideological cynicism, resembles the fetishist's attitude toward fetish. The fetishist's attitude toward his fetus has the partisan form of rejection: “E well knows (for example) that the shoe is just one shoe, yet I need my partner to wear it so I can enjoy it.” According to Zzizek, the position of the political subjects represents the same logical form: “I know very well that (for example) Bob Hawke / Bill Clinton / Market Party doesn't always behave fair and fair, but I still act as if I didn't know it did.” In the famous Althusser works, “Ideology and ideological state devices”, Althusser raises a primitive kind of ideology scene, the moment a policeman (the burden of authority) tells “, you there! ” an individual and the individual recognizes himself as addressing this call. In this “180-grade translation” of the individual versus this addressor, the individual becomes a political subject, Althusser says. Alzheimer's central technical concept of “grand Aure] is very similar to the extent that it is not molded according to the concept of the Althusser Subject (with “S<x1) on which state authorities (e.g. Police can legally call the subjects before responsibility, for example, “Lord” into a theocracy, “Party” under Stalinism or “People” in China today. As indicated by the central chapter of the book The Subliminal Goals of ideology, for Zzizhek, ideologies work to identify individuals in such important terms or political rallying as these, which Zzizek calls <x0) the grand hysteres” (mster signifiers). The strange, but crucial thing about these key political words, according to Zzizek, is that nobody knows what they mean, or who they refer to, no one has witnessed the entire objects they seem to name (for example, God, Nation, or People). This is one reason why Zzizek, with the technical language inherited from structure (by Lakan), says that the most important words in any political doctrine are “marks without marking” (i.e. Words that do not refer to any clear, distinctive concept or demonstrated object.

This Zzizek teaching is related to two other central ideas in his work:

First: Zzizek adopts the psychantic concept that individuals are always subject to “broken” (subjections) divided between levels of their conscious and unconscious awareness.

In all of his work, Zzizek insists that subjects are always divided between what they know and can say consciously about political things, and a group of relatively irresponsible beliefs that they have about individuals with authority and the regime in which they live. Even if people can't say clearly and otherwise, when they support any particular leader or policy, for Zzizek... no less than Edmund Burke, that is not politically crucial.

Second, Zzizek makes a key distinction between wisdom and faith. Right, and because subjects for example don't know what it is or where it is “the” of their “people “, the goal and nature of these beliefs on such issues, according to Zzizek is politically crucial.

Zzizhek's understanding of political trust is modeled on Lakan's sense of transfer to psychinalia. The belief of “sumption” of psychalize analysis is that the other (his analysis) knows the meaning of his symptoms. This is clearly a false belief, in the beginning of the analytical process. But only by having this false belief on the analyst can the test work continue and the transferal trust can become real (when analyst) Really? becomes capable of interpreting symptoms. Zzizek insists that this strange intersubjective or dialectic logic of belief in clinical psychalis is what also characterizes people's political beliefs. Faith is always “trust via Next”, writes Zzizeku. If the subjects do not know the correct meaning of these “major markers” with which to be politically identified, this is because their political faith is mediated by identification. Even though all of them themselves “don't know what they're doing” (which is also the title of a book of Zzizek, 2002) the deepest level of their faith is maintained through the belief that there are others who know it anyway. A number of features of political life appear in a new emphasis, taking into account this psychiatric sense, Zzizek says.

First, Zzizek claims that the key political function of the holders of public parties is to take the place of what he calls, as Lakan does, “Tjetr who needs to know”. Zzizek takes as an example the priests who recite Latin Mass in front of a secular gentile who believes that the priests know the meaning of words and that it is enough to preserve their faith.

Although it does not present an exception to the way political authority operates, for Zzizek this scenario reveals the universal role of the way political consensus is formed.

Second and in this regard, Zzizek claims that the primary nature of political power is “ibolic”. What he means with this further technical term is that the roles, masks, or mandates that public authorities carry are more important politically than the true “reality” of individuals in question (such as non-intelligent, unfaithful to women, good and family women and so on). According to Zzizek, for example, liberal fashiond criticism to George W. Bush is of no importance in the sense or assessment of his political power. It's the individual's offensive or place in their political systems (or, the great “”) that provides the political strength of their words and the trust of subjects in their authority. This is also why Zzizek insists that the use of “real violence” (e.g. War or police shares) by a political leader or regime is equivalent to a confession of weakness as a political regime. Zzizek sometimes illustrates this by saying that people believe through the great Next, or that the other person believes in their own account, regardless of what they may think inside or say cynically.

Note: “

♪ Edion Petriti