The chapter delves into the concept of belief and ideology, using examples like nuns to discuss the implications of genuine belief versus cynical disavowal. It explores how ideology functions in society, touching on Zizek's response to living in a post-ideological age and the relationship between internal beliefs and external power dynamics. The speakers examine the role of the id as a limit of ideology within the symbolic order and reflect on the significance of a book on the sublime object of ideology in philosophy and political theory.
Exciting news! For the first time Bloomsbury has published a book length overview and guide to Slavoj Žižek's 1989 text The Sublime Object of Ideology and we're talking with it's author Rafael Winkler about his reading of Slavoj Žižek's famous text.
Rafael is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He’s the author of Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology: A Reader’s Guide (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), Philosophy of Finitude: Heidegger, Levinas, and Nietzsche (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), Identity and Difference (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), Phenomenology and Naturalism (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), and Identity and Difference: Contemporary Debates on the Self (ed.) (London: Palgrave, 2016)
More on the book from Bloomsbury.
First published in 1989, The Sublime Object of Ideology was Žižek's breakthrough work, and is still regarded by many as his masterpiece. It was an iconoclastic reinvention of ideology critique that introduced the English-speaking world to Žižek's scorching brand of cultural and philosophical commentary and the multifaceted ways in which he explained it. Tying together concepts from aesthetics, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies and the philosophy of belief, it changed the face of contemporary commentary and remains the underpinning of much of his subsequent thinking.
This compelling guide introduces all of the influential thinkers and foundational concepts which Žižek draws on to create this seminal work. Grounding the text's many and varied references in the work of Peter Sloterdijk, Saul Kripke, Walter Benjamin, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel, amongst others, helps students who are encountering this mercurial writer for the first time to understand the philosophical context of his early explorations. Each of Žižek's key arguments are unpacked and laid out, alongside an invaluable account of how The Sublime Object of Ideology impacted the critical terrain on which it landed.
Enjoy!