The Sublime Object of Ideology

By Pankaj Jalote

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 Hitchcocks "Rear Window," from the operas of Wagner to science fiction, from "Alien" to the Jewish Joke, the authors 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 postmodernisms 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. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1844673006
• ISBN13: 9781844673001
• Release Date: January 2009
• Publisher: Verso
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

THE best introduction to hegel, marx, freud, and lacan

While it is undoubtedly true that to read most recent critical theorists one wants acquaintance with the philosophical and anti-philosophical canons, Zizek is a different story. This is because he excels at giving coherent and surprisingly entertaining expositions of some of the most difficult thinkers in western thought (especially lacan, hegel, and kant). Reading Zizek will make you want to read these other writers, and...

A True First Step

"The Sublime Object of Ideology" is perhaps the best introduction to the Zizek-Lacan line of thought in social psychology and psychoanalysis. If "Looking Awry" may be more fascinating because of its many examples from film (Hitchcock in particular), this one thoroughly explains those conceptual knots constantly resumed in Zizek's analyses.

groundbreaking

Zizek brilliantly combines Lacan and Althusser in his reading of Marx and ideology. Unlike other pompous incomprehensible readings of complicated theorists e.g. Lacan and Althusser, Zizek offers a sharp, shrewd, and most important, a comprehensible text to his readers. This book is probably the best introduction to the Zizek phenomenon. It is very theoritical, but it also introduces Zizek's famous references to movies and...

a must read

a must read for any intellectual, interested in theoreticians following Lacan's writing.

Zizek's most sustained argument

Those who know Zizek's work--and chances are you wouldn't be reading this otherwise--are familiar with the author's striking, off-the-cuff applications of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to pop culture (e.g., Aliens, Bladerunner, Forrest Gump). While this text also contains numerous examples, it is much more theoretically oriented than "Looking Awry" or "Enjoy Your Symptom!" and as such is perhaps the best place to go if you're...