Changes

JA: Twenty million Eastern Europeans are going to arrive in Western Europe and the USA in no time. What do you think may happen to local regional cultures?

SZ: Yes, this is the answer to the elementary question, what is the sublime object of ideology? The idea behind it is simply "it is the mode of jouissance, the way ideology functions." The idea is to go against the so-called discourse, the analysis of ideology. You must deconstruct it, reduce it to certain discourse practices and symbolizations. My idea is that this is not enough. Let's take for example the image of the Jew. Of course it is easy to show how the Jew is a product of a certain discourse, but there is something more to it which is again a question of jouissance. And my point is that without this core of jouissance, ideology does not function. So now we are again at the problem of the death of jouissance. In today's so-called cynical society nobody believes in ideology anymore. Lacan says somewhere that the cynic believes in jouissance, and this is precisely what complicates things.

[[Category:Works]]

[[Category:Essays]]