Ideology: What would Zizek Say?

Slavoj Zizek, born in socialist Yugoslavia in 1949, is a Slovenian philosopher and one of the worlds foremost polemicists.

In the core of his philosophy, he addresses the underlying Ideological causes of the impending world political, economic and environmental crisis.

He is an academic versed in the works of Karl Marx, Hegel and Lacan and draws heavily from these philosophers when formulating his arguments.

                 

After Nietzsche's claim "God is Dead" at the beginning of the 19th century, the idea of truth fell into disrepute and the liberal notion that all values and beliefs and their 'truths' are relative and partial. The contemporary overarching notion is that belief systems continue to exist, but they are no more truthful than any other.

This Liberal notion is one that I vehemently oppose. The notion that no belief system is anymore true than another leads to role that power has in giving significance to a belief system. In other words the belief systems and values that exert the most power over people are the ones that are 'Truer'.

This is precisely why I find Zizek so interesting. Zizek proposes that truth can be found by understanding the real power relations that control society and the ideologies that prevent society from realising social and political freedom.

He holds that Marxism and Psychoanalysis - often outworn modes of thinking in contemporary society - are fundamental to understanding ideology. 

In today's society, Marxism is commonly dismissed as it is constantly associated with the downfall of the soviet union and the capitulation of China to capitalism. 

Psychoanalysis on the other hand, has many a person doubting whether it works - and is constantly claimed to be a mode of thinking that is 'obsessed with sex' or merely an 'interesting fictionalisation  of the way our mind works.'

The importance of these lines of thoughts in understanding ideology may be precisely why it is dismissed so readily by today's society.

Marx proposed that the subject is formed through economic exchange.

Lacan proposed that the subject is formed through language.

It is these two proposals that allow us to understand the underlying power structures underpinning ideology - which are so fundamental to coming to a conclusion about 'truth' with regards to value systems.

Zizek defines ideology as the way  the fiction of self-identity is constructed through the structure of language and more widely the 'Symbolic Order'

The Symbolic order, however, is a concept that needs to be explored in more depth. It is a concept I shall explore in a seperate post.