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[[Zizek]] distinguishes [[three]] moments in the [[narrative]] of an ideology.
1. [[Doctrine]] - ideological doctrine concerns the [[ideas]] and theories of an ideology, i.e. [[liberalism]] partly developed from the ideas of John Locke.
2. [[Belief]] - ideological belief designates the [[material]] or [[external]] manifestations and apparatuses of its doctrine, i.e. liberalism is materialized in an independent press, democratic elections and the free [[market]].
3. [[Ritual]] - ideological ritual refers to the [[internalization]] of a doctrine, the way it is experienced as spontaneous, i.e in liberalism [[subjects]] [[naturally]] [[think]] of themselves as free individuals.
These three aspects of ideology [[form]] a kind of narrative. In the first [[stage]] of ideological doctrine we find ideology in its "pure" [[state]]. Here ideology takes the form of a supposedly truthful proposition or set of arguments which, in [[reality]], conceal a vested interest. Locke's arguments [[about]] [[government]] served the interest of the revolutionary Americans rather than the colonizing British. In a second step, a successful ideology takes on the material form which generates belief in that ideology, most potently in the guise of [[Althusser]]'s State Apparatuses. [[Third]], ideology assumes an almost spontaneous [[existence]], becoming instinctive rather than realized either as an [[explicit]] set of arguments or as an institution. the supreme example of such [[spontaneity]] is, for Zizek, the [[notion]] of [[commodity]] [[fetishism]].
In each of these three moments - a doctrine, its materialization in the form of belief and its manifestation as spontaneous ritual - as soon as we think we have assumed a [[position]] of [[truth]] from which to denounce the lie of an ideology, we find ourselves back in ideology again. This is so because our [[understanding]] of ideology is based on a binary [[structure]], which contrasts reality with ideology. To solve this problem, Zizek suggests that we analyze ideology using a ternary structure. So, how can we distinguish reality from ideology? From what position, for example, is Zizek able to denounce the New Age [[reading]] of the [[universe]] as [[ideological mystification]]? It is not from the position in reality because reality is constituted by the [[Symbolic]] and [[the Symbolic]] is where [[fiction]] assumes the guise of truth. The only non-ideological position available is in the [[Real]] - [[the Real]] of the [[antagonism]]. Now, that is not a position we can actually occupy; it is rather "the extraideological point of reference that authorizes us to denounce the [[content]] of our immediate [[experience]] as 'ideological.'" ([[Mapping]] Ideology) The antagonism of the Real is a constant that has to be assumed given the xistence of [[social]] reality (the Symbolic [[Order]]). As this antagonism is part of the Real, it is not [[subject]] to ideological mystification; rather its effect is [[visible]] in ideological mystification. Here, ideology takes the form of the [[spectral]] [[supplement]] to reality, concealing the gap opened up by the failure of reality (the Symbolic) to account fully for the Real. While this [[model]] of the structure of reality does not allow us a position from which to assume an [[objective]] viewpoint, it does presuppose the existence of ideology and thus authorizes the validity of its critique. The [[distinction]] between reality and ideology [[exists]] as a [[theoretical]] given. Zizek does not [[claim]] that he can offer any access to the "objective truth of things" but that ideology must be assumed to [[exist]] if we grant that reality is [[structured]] upon a constitutive antagonism. And if ideology exists we must ne able to subject it to critique. This is the aim of Zizek's [[theory]] of ideology, namely an attempt to keep the [[project]] of ideological critique alive at all in an era in which we are said to have [[left]] ideology behind.
10-13, 70-1, 73-4, 128-9, 133, 157-9, 161 Conversations
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[[Category:Concepts]]
