Product Description

In this provocative and original work, Slavoj Zizek takes a look at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock's Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish Joke, the author's acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society. Zizek takes issue with analysts of the postmodern condition from Habermas to Sloterdijk, showing that the idea of a 'post-ideological' world ignores the fact that 'even if we do not take things seriously, we are still doing them'. Rejecting postmodernism's unified world of surfaces, he traces a line of thought from Hegel to Althusser and Lacan, in which the human subject is split, divided by a deep antagonism which determines social reality and through which ideology operates. Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political significance of these fantasies of control. In so doing, The Sublime Object of Ideology represents a powerful contribution to a psychoanalytical theory of ideology, as well as offering persuasive interpretations of a number of contemporary cultural formations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #379981 in Books
• Published on: 1989-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Review
"a brilliant book.... If Zizek is out of touch with contemporary philosophy, I am the bishop of Ulan Bator.... Pedagogic clarity and a gift for entertainment are two of the many excellences." - Radical Philosophy "Slavoj Zizek, the Giant of Ljubljana,... provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus" - Voice Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover
In this provocative and original work, Slavoj Zizek takes a look at the question of human agency in a postmodern world. From the sinking of the Titanic to Hitchcock's Rear Window, from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from Alien to the Jewish Joke, the author's acute analyses explore the ideological fantasies of wholeness and exclusion which make up human society.

Linking key psychoanalytical and philosophical concepts to social phenomena such as totalitarianism and racism, the book explores the political significance of these fantasies of control. In so doing, The Sublime Object of Ideology represents a powerful contribution to a psychoanalytical theory of ideology, as well as offering persuasive interpretations of a number of contemporary cultural formations.

'a brilliant book ... If Zizek is out of touch with contemporary philosophy, I am the Bishop of Ulan Bator ... Pedagogic clarity and a gift for entertainment are two of the many excellences.' Radical Philosophy

'Slavoj Zizek, the Giant of Ljubljana, ... provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus.' Voice Literary Supplement

About the Author
Slavoj Zizek hold Doctorates in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis and now researches at the Institute of Sociology, Ljubljana. He is the author of Le plus sublime des hysteriques - Hegel passe; co-author and editor of Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir sur Lacan, sans jamais oser le demander a Hitchcock.

Customer Reviews

A theory of ideology after the so called end of history
This is one of Zizek's most systematic works in which he uses the lacanian categories in the philosophical and political analysis. The main development is through the concept of 'fantasy' which will be crucial in his understanding of the fundamental mechanism of ideology. He aims to understand contemporary ideological phenomena such as cynicism, the fragil status of democracy or totalitarianism according to his well-earned reputation as a searing social critic. He links the lacanian real on the one hand with Hegel and on the other with Hichcock and Woody Allen. The book calls for the participation of the reader which makes it very dynamic. No previous reading of Lacan is required since the book contains a brief exposition of the concepts deployed. The antagonisms around which identities are considered establish the bases for a theory of the subject. For those interested in the most recent elaborations of pos-structuralist readings it is no doubt, a must.

Parlez-vous lacanienne?
This is one of the earliest Zizek books available in Britain, and in my view one of the heaviest in terms of his deployment of technical Lacanian terminology. Unlike some of his more recent work, it is structured in quite a systematic way, with each chapter providing a discussion of a self-contained topic - although readers should expect a certain amount of flitting between subjects as Zizek attempts to write about Lacan, philosophy, politics and popular culture all in one go.

Having read a number of Zizek's texts, I would say that this is a formative work - important in demonstrating some of the elements which are later to become Zizek's hallmarks, but not yet providing the full-scale original theorising to be found in texts such as A Plague of Fantasies. What is original here is (if anything) mainly the deployment of Lacanian ideas to such a diverse range of phenomena. Zizek's political position in this book basically echoes the "radical democracy" of Laclau and Mouffe, with a heavier deployment of Lacanian concepts added; this is in distinction to the revolutionary posturing of his later works. I found his tendency to naturalise the phenomena he examines (the "inevitable" degeneration of revolution into Stalinism, the "necessary" supplementing of consent with an imposed gesture of "forced choice", etc.) annoying and misleading.