The Sublime Object of Ideology (Phronesis)

"This is one of the earliest Zizek books available in Britain, and in my view one of the heaviest in terms of his deployment of technical Lacanian terminology. Unlike some of his more recent work, it is structured in quite a systematic way, with each chapter providing a discussion of a self-contained topic - although readers should expect a certain amount of flitting between subjects as Zizek attempts to write about Lacan, philosophy, politics and popular culture all in one go.

Having read a number of Zizek's texts, I would say that this is a formative work - important in demonstrating some of the elements which are later to become Zizek's hallmarks, but not yet providing the full-scale original theorising to be found in texts such as A Plague of Fantasies. What is original here is (if anything) mainly the deployment of Lacanian ideas to such a diverse range of phenomena. Zizek's political position in this book basically echoes the "radical democracy" of Laclau and Mouffe, with a heavier deployment of Lacanian concepts added; this is in distinction to the revolutionary posturing of his later works. I found his tendency to naturalise the phenomena he examines (the "inevitable" degeneration of revolution into Stalinism, the "necessary" supplementing of consent with an imposed gesture of "forced choice", etc.) annoying and misleading."
~ Written on 2004-01-28

"This is one of Zizek's most systematic works in which he uses the lacanian categories in the philosophical and political analysis. The main development is through the concept of 'fantasy' which will be crucial in his understanding of the fundamental mechanism of ideology. He aims to understand contemporary ideological phenomena such as cynicism, the fragil status of democracy or totalitarianism according to his well-earned reputation as a searing social critic. He links the lacanian real on the one hand with Hegel and on the other with Hichcock and Woody Allen. The book calls for the participation of the reader which makes it very dynamic. No previous reading of Lacan is required since the book contains a brief exposition of the concepts deployed. The antagonisms around which identities are considered establish the bases for a theory of the subject. For those interested in the most recent elaborations of pos-structuralist readings it is no doubt, a must."
~ Written on 2002-02-18