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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.