''The Sublime Object of Ideology'' is a 1989 book by the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...

. The work is widely considered his masterpiece.

Summary

Žižek thematizes the

Kantian Kantianism () is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mi ...

notion of the sublime in order to liken

ideology An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...

to the experience of something that is absolutely vast and powerful beyond all perception and objective intelligibility. Žižek provides an analysis of "How did Marx Invent the

Symptom Signs and symptoms are diagnostic indications of an illness, injury, or condition. Signs are objective and externally observable; symptoms are a person's reported subjective experiences. A sign for example may be a higher or lower temperature ...

?", in which he compares the ways in which the notion of symptom runs through the work of the philosopher

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

and

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

, the founder of

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

. Žižek opposes any simplistic reading of the two thinkers, who are shown to have discovered the "

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

" of meaning concealed within the apparently unconnected "forms" of

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. Th ...

(Marx) and

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...

s (Freud). Žižek thinks it is more important to ask why latent content takes a particular form. Žižek therefore argues that according to both Freud and Marx the dream-work and commodity-form itself require analysis.

Reception

Žižek believes ''The Sublime Object of Ideology'' to be one of his best books, while the psychologist Ian Parker writes that it is "widely considered his masterpiece". Anthony Elliott writes that the work is "a provocative reconstruction of critical theory from Marx to

Althusser Louis Pierre Althusser (, ; ; 16 October 1918 – 22 October 1990) was a French Marxist philosopher who studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy. Althusser was a long-time member an ...

, reinterpreted through the frame of

Lacanian Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, and ...

psychoanalysis".

References

1989 non-fiction books Books by Slavoj Žižek Contemporary philosophical literature English-language non-fiction books Verso Books books {{philo-book-stub

Summary

Reception

See also

References