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books_ergo_sum's review against another edition
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
If a philosophy book says, “it is Jane Austen who is perhaps the only counterpart to Hegel in literature,” then it is 100% speaking my language.
How to describe what this book is about.. 😆 It’s an indispensable book if you want to learn about politics, ideology, and human freedom (bad news on that one: you might be less free than you think). To use another Žižek quote: “I already am eating from the trash can all the time—and the name of that trash can is: ideology.” Ultimately, it’s not philosophers like Habermas that have the answers to this problem. For Žižek, we need to look at Hegel, Lacan and Freud, and Althusser. And Marx, you can come too.
I’m personally most passionate about Hegelian philosophy and Žižek highlighted Hegel’s best points imo: a focus on language, the way the earlier sections in a Hegel text are ‘errors’ that are negated yet preserved in later parts, and how philosophy can’t jump right away to Truth (and how too-positivist interpretations of Hegel misunderstand his project).
❤️ Sidenote for my romance reading peeps: I absolutely loved Žižek’s comparison between Jane Austen and Hegel and it made me realize that my favourite romance novels all contain the same thing: a Hegelian moment of misrecognition. That is, a romance that contains just as much personal growth as interpersonal connection between the MCs because of their co-constitutive identities. Because enemies to lovers, opposites attract, culture clash, etc. says just as much about how the characters perceives themselves as it does about how they perceive each other. And that’s why the swooniest romance plots have the most compelling character arcs 🥰
That said, I love me some strong thesis statements, which I didn’t always get in this book. Also it contained less of the jokes, anecdotes, and informal writing style of Žižek’s later works—yet I found it drier without being necessarily clearer, which was meh.
How to describe what this book is about.. 😆 It’s an indispensable book if you want to learn about politics, ideology, and human freedom (bad news on that one: you might be less free than you think). To use another Žižek quote: “I already am eating from the trash can all the time—and the name of that trash can is: ideology.” Ultimately, it’s not philosophers like Habermas that have the answers to this problem. For Žižek, we need to look at Hegel, Lacan and Freud, and Althusser. And Marx, you can come too.
I’m personally most passionate about Hegelian philosophy and Žižek highlighted Hegel’s best points imo: a focus on language, the way the earlier sections in a Hegel text are ‘errors’ that are negated yet preserved in later parts, and how philosophy can’t jump right away to Truth (and how too-positivist interpretations of Hegel misunderstand his project).
❤️ Sidenote for my romance reading peeps: I absolutely loved Žižek’s comparison between Jane Austen and Hegel and it made me realize that my favourite romance novels all contain the same thing: a Hegelian moment of misrecognition. That is, a romance that contains just as much personal growth as interpersonal connection between the MCs because of their co-constitutive identities. Because enemies to lovers, opposites attract, culture clash, etc. says just as much about how the characters perceives themselves as it does about how they perceive each other. And that’s why the swooniest romance plots have the most compelling character arcs 🥰
That said, I love me some strong thesis statements, which I didn’t always get in this book. Also it contained less of the jokes, anecdotes, and informal writing style of Žižek’s later works—yet I found it drier without being necessarily clearer, which was meh.
nmaltec's review against another edition
5.0
Definitely going to need to re-read this, but for now... cool exposition of materialist ideology à la Lacan... can’t say I knew a whole lot about any of these three before reading but now I feel at least semi-equipped to dive further into their respective depths...
sophie_seeing's review against another edition
2.0
im sorry i was so so lost. i shouldent of taken a 3m break half way thorugh but i just couldent follow it at one point. :(
colin_cox's review against another edition
5.0
In The Sublime Object of Ideology Žižek offers a fresh critique of ideology. Ideology is not whole, full, or complete, it simply appears so. It has noticeable gaps and fissures, and those gaps and fissures are moments when the Real (as a symptom) returns. Žižek also thinks form matters more than content. As I read it, this is how he links Freud (psychoanalysis) to Marx (Marxism), which leads him to argue that ideology "serves only its own purpose" and that it "does not serve anything" (92).
The sublime object of ideology is that place where ideology both completes itself (or at least attempts to) but also fails to complete itself. The sublime object is this excessive, unattainable enjoyment that operates in a constitutive way for ideology, much like Lacan's objet petit a for the subject.
Money is one example Žižek uses to describe the sublime object. According to Žižek, what Marx fails to reckon is the "sublime material" that money houses, that "'indestructible and immutable' body which persists beyond the corruption of the body physical" (12). Therefore, money is a sublime object in part because it possesses specific psychoanalytic characteristics. As Žižek argues, it is pre-phallic; however, we must remember the importance of the symbolic order when considering the sublime object. Žižek wants us to remember "how this postulated existence of the sublime body depends on the symbolic order: the indestructible 'body-within-the-body' exempted from the effects of wear and tear is always sustained by the guarantee of some symbolic authority" (13).
The Titanic is another example of a sublime object. Regarding the Titanic, Žižek writes, "The Titanic is a Thing in the Lacanian sense: the material leftover, the materialization of the terrifying, impossible jouissance. By looking at the wreck we gain an insight into the forbidden domain, into a space that should be left unseen: visible fragments are a kind of coagulated remnant of the liquid flux of jouissance, a kind of petrified forest of enjoyment" (76). Žižek continues, "The wreck of the Titanic therefore functions as a sublime object: a positive, material object elevated to the status of the impossible Thing. And perhaps all the effort to articulate the metaphorical meaning of the Titanic is nothing but an attempt to escape this terrifying impact of the Thing, an attempt to domesticate the Thing by reducing it to its symbolic status, by providing it with a meaning" (76-77). The Titanic is overdetermined, but this overdetermination only happens retroactively, and as I read, sublime objects only become sublime objects retroactively.
Žižek also attempts to highlight the goal of ideology: to conceal the multitude of fissures and contradictions that constitute society. Ideology, however, fails, and it takes "its own failure into account in advance" (142). Žižek continues, "the stake of social-ideological fantasy is to construct a vision of society which does exist, a society which is not split by an antagonistic division, a society in which the relation between its parts is organic, complementary...The function of ideological fantasy is to mask this inconsistency, the fact that 'Society doesn't exist' and thus to compensate us for the failed identification" (142). Žižek, for example, uses Jewish stereotypes as a way of demonstrating this point. He writes, "The 'Jew' is the means, for Fascism, of taking into account, of representing its own impossibility: in its positive presence, it is only the embodiment of the ultimate impossibility of the totalitarian project--of its immanent limit...the 'Jew' is nothing but a fetishistic embodiment of a certain fundamental blockage" (142-143). Žižek drives home his point by identifying how these Jewish stereotypes embody something symptomatic within the ideological edifice: "Society is not prevented from achieving its full identity because of Jews: it is prevented by its own antagonistic nature, by its own immanent blockage, and it 'projects' this internal negativity into the figure of the 'Jew.' In other words, what is excluded from the Symbolic (from the frame of the corporatist socio-symbolic order) returns in the Real as a paranoid construction of the 'Jew.'" (143). Žižek seems to suggest it is not enough to have these sorts of moments of realization. We must also see ourselves in the symptom, or "identify with the symptom" and to do so "means to recognize in the 'excesses,' in the disruptions of the 'normal' way of things, the key offering us access to its [society, ideology, and so on] true functioning" (144).
After reading The Sublime Object of Ideology, I wonder, does the recognition of the sublime object offer the only meaningful critique of ideology? It seems to. We often talk about ideology as a way of justifying certain ends (racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on), but Žižek argues that form (or means) matter more than ends. This is the more significant connection Žižek makes between Freud and Marx, dreams and commodities. We should preoccupy ourselves with the form (means), not necessarily the content (ends). Žižek writes, "Why must this inversion of the relation of aims and means remain hidden...Because it would reveal the enjoyment which is at work in ideology...it would reveal that ideology serves only its own purpose, that it does not serve anything--which is precisely the Lacanian definition of jouissance" (92). It precisely this hidden, disavowed enjoyment that Žižek's argument attempts to expose.
The sublime object of ideology is that place where ideology both completes itself (or at least attempts to) but also fails to complete itself. The sublime object is this excessive, unattainable enjoyment that operates in a constitutive way for ideology, much like Lacan's objet petit a for the subject.
Money is one example Žižek uses to describe the sublime object. According to Žižek, what Marx fails to reckon is the "sublime material" that money houses, that "'indestructible and immutable' body which persists beyond the corruption of the body physical" (12). Therefore, money is a sublime object in part because it possesses specific psychoanalytic characteristics. As Žižek argues, it is pre-phallic; however, we must remember the importance of the symbolic order when considering the sublime object. Žižek wants us to remember "how this postulated existence of the sublime body depends on the symbolic order: the indestructible 'body-within-the-body' exempted from the effects of wear and tear is always sustained by the guarantee of some symbolic authority" (13).
The Titanic is another example of a sublime object. Regarding the Titanic, Žižek writes, "The Titanic is a Thing in the Lacanian sense: the material leftover, the materialization of the terrifying, impossible jouissance. By looking at the wreck we gain an insight into the forbidden domain, into a space that should be left unseen: visible fragments are a kind of coagulated remnant of the liquid flux of jouissance, a kind of petrified forest of enjoyment" (76). Žižek continues, "The wreck of the Titanic therefore functions as a sublime object: a positive, material object elevated to the status of the impossible Thing. And perhaps all the effort to articulate the metaphorical meaning of the Titanic is nothing but an attempt to escape this terrifying impact of the Thing, an attempt to domesticate the Thing by reducing it to its symbolic status, by providing it with a meaning" (76-77). The Titanic is overdetermined, but this overdetermination only happens retroactively, and as I read, sublime objects only become sublime objects retroactively.
Žižek also attempts to highlight the goal of ideology: to conceal the multitude of fissures and contradictions that constitute society. Ideology, however, fails, and it takes "its own failure into account in advance" (142). Žižek continues, "the stake of social-ideological fantasy is to construct a vision of society which does exist, a society which is not split by an antagonistic division, a society in which the relation between its parts is organic, complementary...The function of ideological fantasy is to mask this inconsistency, the fact that 'Society doesn't exist' and thus to compensate us for the failed identification" (142). Žižek, for example, uses Jewish stereotypes as a way of demonstrating this point. He writes, "The 'Jew' is the means, for Fascism, of taking into account, of representing its own impossibility: in its positive presence, it is only the embodiment of the ultimate impossibility of the totalitarian project--of its immanent limit...the 'Jew' is nothing but a fetishistic embodiment of a certain fundamental blockage" (142-143). Žižek drives home his point by identifying how these Jewish stereotypes embody something symptomatic within the ideological edifice: "Society is not prevented from achieving its full identity because of Jews: it is prevented by its own antagonistic nature, by its own immanent blockage, and it 'projects' this internal negativity into the figure of the 'Jew.' In other words, what is excluded from the Symbolic (from the frame of the corporatist socio-symbolic order) returns in the Real as a paranoid construction of the 'Jew.'" (143). Žižek seems to suggest it is not enough to have these sorts of moments of realization. We must also see ourselves in the symptom, or "identify with the symptom" and to do so "means to recognize in the 'excesses,' in the disruptions of the 'normal' way of things, the key offering us access to its [society, ideology, and so on] true functioning" (144).
After reading The Sublime Object of Ideology, I wonder, does the recognition of the sublime object offer the only meaningful critique of ideology? It seems to. We often talk about ideology as a way of justifying certain ends (racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on), but Žižek argues that form (or means) matter more than ends. This is the more significant connection Žižek makes between Freud and Marx, dreams and commodities. We should preoccupy ourselves with the form (means), not necessarily the content (ends). Žižek writes, "Why must this inversion of the relation of aims and means remain hidden...Because it would reveal the enjoyment which is at work in ideology...it would reveal that ideology serves only its own purpose, that it does not serve anything--which is precisely the Lacanian definition of jouissance" (92). It precisely this hidden, disavowed enjoyment that Žižek's argument attempts to expose.
virtualmima's review against another edition
2.5
Freud, and by extension Lacan, Žižek, and everyone else who has been influenced by his ideas, are dealing with a form of obsessional neuroticism specific to patriarchal Western civilization, namely white Christian conservatives. If psychoanalysis had been popularized in an entirely different era or part of the world, everything about it would be entirely different. Even if we took it specifically as a way to analyze Western civilization, it's still wrong because it's not self-aware of the fact that it's dealing with a specifically Western phenomenon, so it treats itself as universal theory of human behavior. By now Freud should have been ditched by everyone, not just psychologists but philosophers too, in favor of a deeper analysis of human psychological development. Patterns between people do not reveal the underlying mechanisms of human psychology. The best way to analyze humans is by analyzing oneself phenomenologically and testing it on other people of various backgrounds, provided that the self-analysis is done by someone skeptical of all past and present theories, and who has familiarized themselves thoroughly with psychology, philosophy, and other relevant subject matter. It would be a lot more useful to deconstruct Western civilization using entirely new methodology than to use an outdated Western ideology that no one accepts anymore.
The fetishization of Freud, Lacan, and Hegel by contemporary philosophers demonstrates an unwillingness to progress that persists underneath their supposed deconstruction. The mistake here is in believing that the propositions by these people are logically sound, when it's clear that they willingly rejected logic whenever convenient. No matter how logical you are, building upon the sloppy incorrect ideas of other people will get you nowhere. If you remove Freud and Hegel from the consciousness of recent thinkers, there might occasionally be some sense. Butler and Žižek aren't entirely bad, they're just overly polluted by the backwards ideologies of Freud, Lacan, and Hegel, which they accept entirely without question. There's really no reason for philosophers to build upon each other's ideas, particularly when the previous thinkers were wrong. Composing a work out of other people's thoughts and modifying it to add your own is not as effective as composing something that is originally yours. This new tradition of referencing other people constantly prevents human thought from progress, because the new thinkers still remain stuck holding onto dead ideas from the past. Filling a work with neologisms is no solution either, because even though they come in handy sometimes, a lot of 20th century thinkers used them a little too excessively when they weren't really needed, and frequently without any sort of explanation to define their terms. Neologisms aren't a problem here, fortunately, but the reliance on other people's thoughts does prevent this from going much deeper than what had already been accomplished by earlier postmodernists.
The fetishization of Freud, Lacan, and Hegel by contemporary philosophers demonstrates an unwillingness to progress that persists underneath their supposed deconstruction. The mistake here is in believing that the propositions by these people are logically sound, when it's clear that they willingly rejected logic whenever convenient. No matter how logical you are, building upon the sloppy incorrect ideas of other people will get you nowhere. If you remove Freud and Hegel from the consciousness of recent thinkers, there might occasionally be some sense. Butler and Žižek aren't entirely bad, they're just overly polluted by the backwards ideologies of Freud, Lacan, and Hegel, which they accept entirely without question. There's really no reason for philosophers to build upon each other's ideas, particularly when the previous thinkers were wrong. Composing a work out of other people's thoughts and modifying it to add your own is not as effective as composing something that is originally yours. This new tradition of referencing other people constantly prevents human thought from progress, because the new thinkers still remain stuck holding onto dead ideas from the past. Filling a work with neologisms is no solution either, because even though they come in handy sometimes, a lot of 20th century thinkers used them a little too excessively when they weren't really needed, and frequently without any sort of explanation to define their terms. Neologisms aren't a problem here, fortunately, but the reliance on other people's thoughts does prevent this from going much deeper than what had already been accomplished by earlier postmodernists.
whossdead's review against another edition
i need more context; refine my vocabulary and read more books to generate an easy context to read this