The Sublime Object of Ideology

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1. vrganjSep 2026
   > Although it can have a beneficial effect on a person, a commitment to an ideology tends to have a deleterious effect on the world when many share a commitment to the same ideology.

   I think you may have fallen victim to a common misconception of how ideology actually functions.

   The most affected by ideology aren't the ones consciously committing to a cause. Ideology is strongest precisely when you think you're outside of it - when your ideological commitments have become so normalized that they are completely invisible to you.

   There is no such thing as being unideological, whatever you perceive as such is just a reflection of your own ideology.

   If you'd like to delve deeper into the theory of ideology and how it functions, I'd recommend the works of philosophy legend and ideology expert Slavoj Zizek.

   There's his seminal work, The Sublime Object of Ideology, which goes into this at depth, but is a very dry and academic read. If you'd like something a bit more digestible, I would recommend the movie The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, which uses a more pop-sci approach of dissecting popular movies to demonstrate their ideological function.

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2. curationDec 2023
   As a critical theorist, Freud was rejected alongside many old white dudes in an understandable reactionary reflex for many decades. One had to turn to Fanon to access thinking about the unconscious. I would argue that currents in philosophy to us Lacan and Freud to read capitalist subjectivity alongside new interpretations of Hegel have shifted the field tremendously, starting with the 1989 work of Zizek Sublime Object of Ideology. Over the decades this work has increased in relevance as a way of understanding a way out of our current predicament.
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3. malermeisterApr 2022
   Here's Žižek commenting better than I could:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIwMIrj5Ulo

   >I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan is ideology. The material force of ideology - makes me not see what I'm effectively eating. It's not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament - when we are within ideology, is that - when we think that we escape it into our dreams - at that point we are within ideology.

   In other words, what you think of as moderate and not ideological is a result of your ideology itself.

   For a more thorough, very academic examination of ideology, I can recommend the book The Sublime Object of Ideology.

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4. ollranJul 2021
   The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) by Žižek
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5. Barrin92Jun 2021
   If you think there isn't a lot of substance I don't think you've actually read any of his stuff. Sublime Object of Ideology and his work on Lacan in general are well-respected. There's not a lot of nonsense in his theoretical work at all.

   When he engages the public, or whatever you find on youtube which is what I suspect you've seen of him based on your impression, he does indeed joke around a lot. But this has to do with his inherent distaste for 'preaching'. He's no fan of climbing on a pedestal and pretending to speak from a position of authority, he's said himself he's always considered that authoritarian.

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6. vippySep 2017
   Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. I also recommend Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology, but it's dense, so his film The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is a good stand in.
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