Slavoj Žižek’s The Sublime Object of Ideology

Abstract

This chapter considers Slavoj Žižek’s 1989 book The Sublime Object of Ideology and seeks to both place its immergence and its continuing reception and status into context. The chapter argues that Žižek’s style, evident in a nascent form in this early work, functions as an indispensable and enmeshed element of his ongoing argument. Concerned as he is – in this book in particular, although also throughout his extensive body of work – with the functioning of ideology, Žižek places himself in an always precarious position of seeking to both analyze and explain ideology without simply repeating it. That is to say, how is it that Žižek’s arguments don’t fall prey to the very critique he directs at others? Or, indeed, do they?