A review by bradach
The Sublime Object of Ideology by Slavoj Žižek

4.0

If you like Hegel, you'll like this guy. If you don’t like Hegel, you might appreciate him more after reading Zizek anyway. I read this thinking it would build to some kind of clear-cut consensus, instead of just kind of a bunch of ideas and thought experiments that can be understood and made sense of but I just don't see the practical use besides: Ideology is dangerous. Basically my takeaway from this book is that we need to be aware of what reality is (the Real) vs what we want it to be through our fantasy (linked to our ideology) connected to the symbolic order. Ideology never works because it oversimplifies and results in our needing to create a scapegoat for the wrong in society, ala antisemitism in the case of fascist ideology. This scapegoat is not actually Real but is needed for the ideology itself to exist. This is a great primer to the psychology of ideology, but I think Zizek’s explanation is far more confusing that it actually is, although I especially appreciate all of his links between Lacanian psychoanalysis and modern culture. I don’t think I’d read this book again but we’ll see.