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Introduction
In order to understand today’s world, we need cinema, literally. It’s only in
cinema that we get that crucial dimension we are not ready to confront
in our reality. If you are looking for what is in reality more real than reality
itself look into the cinematic fiction.
— Slavoj Žižek
Ideology: Between The Matrix and Inception
The Wachowski brothers’ The Matrix (1999) and Christopher Nolan’s
Inception (2010) each posit a particular thesis on ideology. In The
Matrix, we get the standard conception of ideology as “false conscious-
ness.” The matrix is a universe of symbolic fictions, regulating our relation
to “reality.” Emancipation is possible once one removes oneself from and
leaves this fictional reality, and one discovers the real reality, behind the
illusion. The Matrix, then, appears to speak directly to cinematic fictions.
Are we not all in “the matrix” when we are watching films?
This is certainly the claim made by Alain Badiou when he compares The
Matrix to two other science fiction films: Vincenzo Natali’s Cube (1997)
and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999). All three films deal in one way or
another with the difference between reality and appearance, and they are of
interest for Badiou since they present the thesis that, in his terms, “the visi-
ble (appearance) is in reality a particularly aleatory indication of the Real.”1
Or to put things differently, according to Badiou, the cinema has the power
to “render visibly uncertain the certainty of the visible.”2 The three films
cited by Badiou make a claim toward the relationship between appearance
and reality. Cube, for him, poses a Kantian transcendental question about
how the subject might react if the totality of its world were subtracted,
removed from beneath its feet— that is, if the subject were to be pulled
out of its “natural” environment. eXistenZ, in contrast, asks about how the
subject might react if the surrounding world could not be given any kind
of objective consistency. The Matrix, then, poses the Platonic question, evi-
dent in its connection to the allegory of the cave: What is the relationship
between the reality of the subject and the formation of subjectivization
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2 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
under the constraints of appearances? For Badiou, it is the latter that is
superior to the other two films since The Matrix is self- reflexive enough to
pose questions about the cinema itself. Yet I would argue against Badiou
that The Matrix only speaks to one side of the equation between cinema
and appearances.
Inception posits a different thesis. Ideology, here, is less about the sym-
bolic fictions— the appearances— that regulate external reality. It has more
to do with the underlying sublime fantasy that regulates our approach to
reality. Subjects in the social world never truly approach reality spontane-
ously, at a zero level. Our approach to reality is always supported by our
a priori assumptions and perceptions about the world, even if we do not
yet realize this at a conscious level. In The Matrix, the radical act of the
hero, Neo (Keanu Reeves)— the act that ultimately allows him to break
free, to change the coordinates of his relationship to ideology— involves
maintaining a safe distance between himself and the virtual world of sym-
bolic reality, the matrix itself as the technological medium of appearances
representing reality. Inception, however, is much harsher. In order to escape
from the world of symbolic fictions, the hero, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio),
is required not only to maintain a distance between himself and symbolic
“reality.” He must go even further: he must identify with and risk the inner
most kernel of his very being. He must traverse the very fantasy that struc-
tures his approach to reality itself.3
Taken together, The Matrix and Inception allow us to perceive the very
coordinates of ideology today. Ideology is not only the set of symbolic fic-
tions that regulate external reality, nor is it simply the fantasy that supports
our approach to reality. Ideology is to be located in between the symbolic
and the sublime. It has to do with the relationship between the external
symbolic order that regulates social reality and the obscene underside of
fantasy (an underside that remains unconscious) that attaches us ever
more aggressively to external reality. My thesis builds on and draws on the
work of the contemporary Slovenian political philosopher and psychoana-
lyst Slavoj Žižek.
One cannot say with certainty whether Žižek is simply a political phi-
losopher or if he is cultural critic. It is more difficult to say whether he is
a film theorist or simply a pop culture enthusiast. Some might also argue
that Žižek creates a field of his own. In many ways, and paradoxically so,
this most modernist of thinkers is truly the most postmodern thinker
to date. The world with which Žižek engages is one that is, on the one
hand, vividly familiar and quite representative of the images we confront
daily in our consumerist “society of the spectacle” yet is, on the other
hand, painfully obscure. In a single sentence, Žižek can pass from details
in the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch to the most complex
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INTRODUCTION 3
conceptualizations of enjoyment, subjectivity, ideology, and politics in the
works of Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Marx, and Lacan (among others). He is a
thinker capable of conceptualizing variations in European ideology simply
by making observations about the mundane details of toilets in Germany,
France, and England.4 He is also at the same time a well- known “joker”
and, for some, the most dangerous philosopher writing today. It is often
difficult to keep up with Žižek, as he has been averaging about two books
per year for the last twenty years. This is either the product of a prolific
genius or the work of an obsessive neurotic, never ready— or, perhaps,
afraid— to settle on any one “answer.”
Žižek is also a figure who reaches beyond the confines of academic elit-
ism. His appeal stems, partially, from his appearance as image. He is the
subject of a documentary, Žižek! (2005), directed by Astra Taylor, and the
writer and host of the film The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006), directed
by Sophie Fiennes. A simple search for Žižek on Google or YouTube also
results in an unending stream of images, videos, and texts. Commenting
on an interview she conducted with Žižek for the Abercrombie and Fitch
catalog— which, as she notes, is “well known in the United States for selling
clothes by featuring barely clad teenage bodies in highly charged homo-
erotic photographs”— the political theorist Jodi Dean writes, “That Aber-
crombie wanted to feature this philosopher (who later supplied text for a
particularly beautiful and risqué edition of the catalogue) testifies to his
near pop- star status.”5
The British cultural theorist Peter Dews comments that “the work of
the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek seems to offer an irresistible range
of attractions for theorists wishing to engage with contemporary culture,
without accepting the flimsy postmodernist doxa, which is often the only
available gloss on it.”6 Alain Badiou adds that “the brilliant work of Žižek
is something like the creation of a conceptual matrix that has the power to
shed new light on a great deal of cultural facts.”7
What mostly attracts readers to Žižek’s work is his ability to engage and
expand on some of the most difficult questions facing theorists today, such
as how to engage a critical theory of ideology at a time when we are said
to be living in a “postideological era.” Such an understanding of ideology
is not simply meant to undermine the reigning liberal- democratic doxa
(which in different variations can also be conflated with neoliberalism or
neoconservatism) à la Francis Fukuyama or Samuel Huntington that with
the end of the Cold War we no longer have to be concerned with ideo-
logical warfare; we can simply resort to managing and administering the
world as it is in “reality”— an attitude that has been severely questioned,
Žižek notes, since the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11,
2001 (a tragedy), and the financial meltdown in 2008 (a farce).8 In order
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4 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
to engage in the critique of ideology under the conditions of the so- called
postideological world, Žižek goes as far as undermining the very (Marx-
ian) notion of ideology as a kind of “false consciousness.” As Žižek puts it,
it is important to distinguish between constituted ideology— “empirical
manipulations and distortions at the level of content”— and constitu-
tive ideology— “the ideological form which provides the coordinates of
the very space within which the content is located.”9 In his own thought,
Žižek refers to the German Idealist philosophy of Kant and Hegel as well
as psychoanalysis in order to understand the operation of ideology when
it is no longer a matter of mystification. For Žižek, ideology has less to do
with a false representation of reality and more to do with the “primordial
lie” that constitutes reality itself. As he puts it, “[i]deology really succeeds
when even the facts which at first sight contradict it start to function in
its favour.”10
Dews notes that Žižek’s writings are “informed by a vivid and sophisti-
cated grasp of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, and are enlivened by con-
stant references to works of fiction, cinema, classical music and opera.”11
Terry Eagleton even goes as far as to refer to Žižek as “Lacan’s representa-
tive on earth.”12 However, to limit Žižek’s work to critical engagements with
the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan and works of popular culture is
to miss out on some of the central features of Žižek’s “project.” While both
Lacan and popular culture hold important places in Žižek’s writings, they
serve merely as linchpins for his broader endeavor to elaborate a theory
of ideology and subjectivity that draws heavily on German Idealism. This
philosophical project is accompanied by a strong commitment to revolu-
tionary politics. Žižek often dismisses his own engagements with popular
culture as mere examples used for the purpose of more clearly elaborat-
ing his philosophical project. Adrian Johnston’s book Žižek’s Ontology: A
Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (2008) is one of the most
decisive engagements as of yet with the philosophical underpinnings of
Žižek’s theoretical and political tasks.
In the preface to his book, Johnston writes that “[w]hen Žižek declares
that he employs, for instance, popular culture as a subservient vehicle for
the (re)deployment of late- modern philosophy . . . he is quite serious. The
chain Kant- Schelling- Hegel, knotted together vis- à- vis Lacan himself as
this chain’s privileged point de capiton (quilting point), is the underlying
skeletal structure holding together the entirety of the Žižekian theoretical
edifice.”13 Johnston is at pains to argue that the cultural studies reading of
Žižek is misguided and that Žižek’s constant references to popular culture
should not distract readers from his more philosophical goal of elaborat-
ing a transcendental materialist theory of subjectivity, the subtitle of John-
ston’s book.
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INTRODUCTION 5
Contrary to Johnston’s claim, Paul Bowman suggests that “Žižek’s dis-
avowal of cultural studies is deliberate and strategic. . . . Žižek’s strategic and
apparently belligerent relation to cultural studies actually offers something
of a ‘royal road’ for appreciating and understanding his work; and that
making sense of this peculiar relation in fact provides us with a number of
important insights into his entire orientation.”14
What follows is somewhere in between Johnston’s and Bowman’s assess-
ments and is grounded in the way that Žižek’s analyses of cinema show how,
as Fabio Vighi puts it, “the subject connects with the ideological fantasy
woven in external reality,”15 demonstrating that Žižek “is the only theorist
today who . . . advocates the convergence of psychoanalysis and film as part
of a project for the radical re- politicisation of culture.”16 While the pres-
ent investigation is developed in solidarity with Johnston’s approach, its
object of analysis is quite sympathetic to Bowman’s and Vighi’s comments
regarding Žižek’s critical orientation and his engagement with popular cul-
ture and cinema. Although Žižek’s orientation is philosophical in stature,
one cannot help but consider the central place of culture in his analyses of
ideology and subjectivity, particularly his constant and continued engage-
ments with film and cinema.
Tw o c e n t ra l o b j e ct i v e s o c c u p y t h e t e r r a i n o f t h e p r e s e n t b o o k : ( 1 ) t o f u r -
ther articulate the contours of a Žižekian theory of ideology and (2) to expand
on a strictly Žižekian theory of film. The latter requires engaging with two
axes of Žižek’s theoretical writings. The first and most obvious is Žižek’s
constant and recurring references to examples in cinema. The second is
his overtly Lacanian approach to ideology critique. Because of his engage-
ments with both cinema and Lacan, it is not difficult to understand why
Žižek has been taken up in film studies, even if controversy remains regard-
ing Žižek’s status as a film theorist. In what follows, I argue that Žižek’s film
theory involves not theorizing about film as such. Instead, I seek to reverse
the trajectory of film theory. Rather than theorizing film— an endeavor
that, as I explain later, has become increasingly problematic— film theory
must focus on theorizing ideology by way of film criticism. To do this, I
begin by providing some context for the relationship between the critique
of ideology and film theory.
The Critique of Ideology
A single problematic occupies the field of the Marxian theory of ideology.
As Fredric Jameson puts it, “if the world is as Marxism describes it”— that
is, if society really is organized along the lines of domination and exploita-
tion; if capitalism really does divide society into antagonisms between the
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6 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
class that rules and the class that is exploited; and if all the legal, social, and
cultural formations in the superstructure really are determined by the rela-
tions of domination and exploitation in the mode of production, and so
on— “if this particular ‘truth’ about the world has finally been revealed to
us in modern times, how is it that people continue to refuse it and insist
on seeing the world in quite different terms?”17
The Marxian theory of ideology has developed, in various different
guises, by way of various different methods, in order to answer the ques-
tion as to why its particular “truths” have been encountered with so much
resistance, especially by those whose interests it asserts. What is therefore
at stake in the Marxian theory of ideology is not simply the “truth” value of
that which it reveals about the world but rather the extent to which its rev-
elations have enough force to actively transform the existing conditions of
domination and exploitation. The theory (or “Theory”) of ideology sug-
gests that this “truth” alone is not enough to generate a “class conscious-
ness” capable of transforming the existing conditions of existence.
One of the main problems facing Marxian theorists of ideology is that,
as Colin MacCabe notes, Marx abandoned the subject of ideology after
1846.18 Thus no such theory exists in Marx’s later work. In an effort to
build an understanding of why the Marxian critique of capitalism was met
with so much resistance, Marxian scholars such as Antonio Gramsci and
Georg Lukács returned to the problematic of ideology. Gramsci, on the one
hand, sought an answer in his conception of “hegemony.” Post- Marxists,
such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe,19 have taken up Gramsci’s
conception of hegemony as a way of elaborating on a nondialectical theory
of ideology. Lukács, on the other hand, built on the Marxian philosophy of
dialectical materialism by examining the antinomies of bourgeois thought
from a Hegelian perspective.
The limits of bourgeois thought, according to Lukács, parallel the limits
of Kantian transcendental philosophy. Because of its own internal limits,
bourgeois thought is incapable of perceiving its excesses as a result of its
own system of rationalism. In the Kantian paradigm, the subject is capable
of understanding everything about reality except for the fact of its own
existence or the form of its own thought.20 Bourgeois thought perceives
excesses (the existence of the proletariat, for example) as instances of
irrationality that trouble established rationality. As Lukács puts it, “Kant
did not go beyond the critical interpretation of ethical facts in the indi-
vidual consciousness . . . these facts were thereby transformed into some-
thing merely there and could not be conceived as having been ‘created.’ ”21
The Kantian approach, in other words, does not account for the histori-
cal development of objects of thought and their relation to the form of
consciousness.
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INTRODUCTION 7
The difference between bourgeois and proletarian consciousness, accord-
ing to Lukács, is not a difference between two different versions of objective
reality. Objective reality “in its immediacy,” as Lukács puts it, is the same
for both the bourgeois and the proletariat.22 What is different is the par-
ticular historical, subjective position from which each engages with objec-
tive reality. In other words, there are not two different versions of objective
reality. There is just one reality (or “Real”) that is split internally. At stake
in the class struggle is the form or meaning of “reality”— bourgeois or
proletariat— that will organize society. From the Marxian perspective, the
form of the social coincides with the dominant form of thought.
Unlike the Kantian problematic, wherein the subject is capable of under-
standing all experience except for the contingent fact of its own existence,
Hegelian dialectics, according to Lukács, allows the subject to comprehend
the limits of thought as an effect of the historical form of thought itself.
Hegelian dialectics allows the subject to comprehend its own existence
in its historical contingency— that is, change in history means a change in
the form of thought. Dialectics allows the subject to understand its own
position in a totality, not by accounting for the irrational as an excess of
the rational, but by understanding the rational from the perspective of the
irrational, or from a perspective that is inaccessible to the dominant form
of thought. The “irrational” represents that which the dominant form of
thought cannot explain in its own terms; it is that which contradicts the
dominant form of thought, and in order to be operative, the dominant
form of thought must rid itself of contradiction. It is the irrational, the
exception, that speaks to the (false) universality of the form. Put differently,
there are not two universalities/totalities— that of the rational and that of
the irrational. There is one universality, split between the particularity of the
“rational” and the singularity of the “irrational.” One cannot understand
the fallacies of the ruling ideology; one cannot understand the faults with
its “rationalism,” according to Lukács, unless it is viewed from an external
position in a totality— that is, unless it is viewed from the position of the
“irrational,” what the ruling ideology cannot understand in its own terms.
For Hegel, however, in a historical transformation, it is the concept rather
than objective reality that is changed. History, from a Hegelian perspective,
is the history of ideas. The shift from Hegel to Marx is simply an extension
of this logic. From the Marxian perspective, the subject must transform the
objective conditions of existence in order to develop an equal transforma-
tion in itself. In other words, a change in the concept is contingent on a
transformation of material reality. This, in a nutshell, is how the Marxian
philosophy of dialectical materialism should be understood.
Dialectical materialism is best rendered as a move from the Kantian
transcendental subject to the historical subject in Hegel and finally to the
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8 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
revolutionary subject in Marx, which destroys the limits imposed on its
own subjectivity by transforming the objective conditions of its existence.
A dialectical materialist critique of ideology is not just epistemological; it
is, more important, ontological. Nondialectical perspectives— even those
that are in solidarity with Marxism (i.e., the Marxism of Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri)— fail to make the ontological connection between the
class struggle and ideology.
The dialectical method of historical transformation, I claim, is mir-
rored in the transformation of the subject in the psychoanalytic cure. For
both Marxism and psychoanalysis the point is not simply to change the
perspective from which one perceives one’s own objective conditions of
existence; it is, rather, to change the objective conditions of one’s existence
in order to then reconstitute oneself anew. According to each, change is
only possible when there is a coincidence of subject and object. In Hege-
lian terms, this is the position of Absolute Knowing (as opposed to Abso-
lute Knowledge); in psychoanalytic terms, this is the position of subjective
destitution— when the subject gains consciousness of the fallacies con-
cerning the Symbolic (as opposed to the objective) conditions of its exis-
tence, or the Symbolic coordinates of its existence. Subjective destitution
represents the ends of analysis. At this point, the subject can act in one of
two ways. The subject can either reconstitute the fantasy that structures
the Symbolic coordinates of its existence, or it can traverse the fantasy and
change the objective conditions of its existence. Both the Marxian revo-
lutionary subject and the psychoanalytic cure require an (ethical) act in
concordance with the second option. The first is an operation of ideology.
This provides one answer to the Marxian problematic of ideology. Resis-
tance to the “truths” of Marxian criticism, I claim, is pathological in the
sense that the subject of capitalism is too firmly attached to the fantasy that
structures the coordinates of its own existence within the Symbolic. In ide-
ology, the subject is still too “passionately attached” to its Symbolic iden-
tity.23 My thesis, like that of Lukács, is that the subject of capitalist society is
still too Kantian. This is a subject that is inherently pathological, and for me,
all the nondialectical theories of ideology and subjectivity are susceptible
to perverse, psychotic, and/or neurotic conceptions of and relationships
to power/authority. These pathological perspectives on power/authority
are prevented from perceiving their own subjection as a result of the class
struggle. In other words, they all suffer by ignoring the ontological attach-
ment of the subject to authority. The subject, as a result of its “passionate
attachment to authority,” is incapable of seeing beyond the confines of its
own form of thought. In other words, the furthest that bourgeois thought
and all the nondialectical theories of ideology can go is to try to theorize the
matrix; the point is to change it!
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INTRODUCTION 9
From the Critique of Ideology to Cinema
The dialectical critique of ideology, I argue, seeks to dissolve this ontologi-
cal deadlock. Unlike other philosophical “systems”— systems that repro-
duced dogmatism— the dialectic in Marxism and psychoanalysis is better
understood as a unity- of- theory- and- practice. Its goal is not to create cer-
tainty about the world but to constantly revise and recreate new conditions
of subjectivity. But does this theory give too little credit to the subject? Is
this just another theory of “false consciousness?”
It is often claimed that Marx treated workers as objects, ignoring the
fact that workers are living human beings, with consciousness, and have
the ability to articulate ideological, political, and economic preferences.
They are people who are capable of adapting to different kinds of situa-
tions and are able to compromise. They also have the ability to “wage war”
to protect their rights.
Marx, it is claimed, also tended to impose “theoretical constructs upon
historical realities and so distorted history.”24 Furthermore, the theoretical
constructs that Marx applied to historical reality reflected not the actual
practice of capitalism but merely capitalist ideology. Critics also claim
that, in practice, the dynamics of workers’ resistance have helped to trans-
form capitalist practice, turning it into a terrain of compromise. As David
Harvey points out, not only do these criticisms challenge the basic ele-
ments of Marx’s theoretical and historical interpretation of capitalism;
they also challenge the basis for his revolutionary politics.25
These criticisms, Harvey notes, are not entirely untrue. However, Marx’s
claim, significantly, was that the world cannot be understood by way of
simple, subjective experiences and interpretations— this, of course, is the
error in the Kantian perspective. In order for the working class to real-
ize its “historical mission” and understand its own enslavement, it must
have access to a particular kind of knowledge grounded in scientific under-
standing. This claim does not deny the subjective experiences of workers
their own validation, nor does it claim that their own personal experi-
ences are unworthy of consideration. It is, as Harvey points out, impor-
tant to understand how workers “cope” with their situation. It is necessary
to understand something about the activities in which they take part, the
games they play, the forms of entertainment they consume, the kinds of
friendships they have, the dynamics of family life, the ways in which they
cooperate with each other, the ways in which they confront and deal with
authority, and the particular aspirations and senses of morality they pro-
mote in their everyday lives— all of which play a role in making the labor
process bearable. The question that Marx asks, however, is “What is it that
workers are being forced to cope with?” What types of conflicts and forms
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10 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
of domination are workers dealing with that result in all these various cul-
tural constructs from below?
Marxian theory “holds up to workers, as in a mirror, the objective con-
ditions of their own alienation, and exposes the forces that dominate their
social existence and their history.”26 But the major dilemma of theory is
that it does not present itself well to the consciousness of the proletar-
iat. Political class consciousness, Harvey asserts, is not “forged” by some
appeal to theory. The roots of political class consciousness are formed
within the fabric of everyday life and (importantly) within the subjective
experiences of ordinary people. This is both a barrier to and the raison
d’être of “the Theory,” for it argues that the realities of exploitation under
capitalism are obscured by fetishisms, for both the worker and the capital-
ist. What is obscured is the origin of surplus- value in exploitation. There
is thus a gap between what subjective experience teaches and that which
theory seeks to reveal. Nevertheless, despite the achievements of theory,
Marx could not solve the problem of political class consciousness, a prob-
lematic that has been the single greatest challenge and undertaking for
Western Marxists.
Beginning in the 1930s, Western Marxists started taking an interest
in psychoanalysis. Like Marxism, psychoanalysis also takes into consid-
eration resistances to its teachings— which are often unpleasant, painful,
and difficult to absorb— within the terms of its own systematic accounts
of power and repression. It is therefore easy to understand why Marxian
theorists turned to psychoanalysis in order to build on the theory of ideol-
ogy. Psychoanalysis proved to be quite influential for several key figures in
the Frankfurt school, including Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and
Herbert Marcuse. These thinkers focused primarily on the teachings of
Sigmund Freud, and their work is often dubbed “Freudo- Marxism.” How-
ever, one of the most important configurations of psychoanalytic Marxism
developed in the work of the French Marxian philosopher Louis Althusser.
Althusser’s theory of ideology is often the starting point for contempo-
rary theories of ideology. Althusser’s psychoanalytic Marxism differs sig-
nificantly from the Freudo- Marxism of the Frankfurt school. In contrast to
the Freudian influence of the earlier versions of psychoanalytic Marxism,
Althusser’s work draws its influence from the teachings of the French psy-
choanalyst Jacques Lacan. From the early 1950s to the mid- 1960s, Lacan
sought to reinterpret Freudian psychoanalysis by way of structural linguis-
tics. He is most famous for arguing that the unconscious is structured like
a language. The Lacanian influence in Althusser’s work comes across in
his most well- known essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
(Notes Towards an Investigation).” Here, Althusser claims that ideology
interpellates individuals as subjects in ideological apparatuses, such as the
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INTRODUCTION 11
school, the church, the media, and so on. Althusser’s essay on ideological
state apparatuses proved to be rather influential in several disciplines and
fields of critical study in the 1970s, particularly because it introduced a con-
ception of the subject into the Marxian theory of ideology. The Lacanian-
inspired theory of the subject gained significance for critical theorists by
way of Althusser, but its influence was perhaps strongest in film studies and
“film theory.”
Following the influence of Althusser, Marxian and Lacanian perspec-
tives on ideology and subjectivity began to enter the field of film studies.
Film theorists in the 1970s approached the study of cinema as an ideologi-
cal apparatus. The theory of ideology became an area of interest for film
scholars interested in spectatorship. However, film scholars in the 1970s
were less interested in the study of ideology. They were more interested in
understanding something about the way in which films function as ideol-
ogy and how spectators are interpellated as subjects. They sought, there-
fore, to develop a theory of film, rather than a theory of ideology.
In the following, I argue that, instead of trying to use Marxism and
psychoanalysis to understand something about film and spectatorship,
Marxian theorists of ideology should try to further their understanding
of ideology by studying film and spectatorship from a psychoanalytic
perspective. Film in particular, and mass culture in general, is of interest
because it is an aspect of everyday life and part of the culture from below
that makes it possible to understand how people cope with the deadlocks
of power and repression and of exploitation. Film theory, I argue, adds
significantly to the theory of ideology— but not only for intellectuals. Film
is of interest because it speaks in a popular language. Therefore, if theo-
rists could speak in the language of cinema, perhaps, I claim, it could be
possible to relate that which is necessary to understand in theory. This is
precisely why Žižek is of interest for Marxian film theorists.
Toward a Žižekian Film Theory
The way in which Žižek approaches films with regards to ideology and
subjectivity actually gives us cause to rethink the entire project of film the-
ory. What, in fact, were screen theorists working toward? Were they, as the
American film scholar David Bordwell has suggested, trying to understand
something about the social and psychic functions of cinema?27 Or, closer
to Žižek’s project, were they trying to understand something about the
social and psychic functions of ideology and subjectivity, focusing on film
and spectatorship as objects of inquiry for the purpose of this particular
investigation?
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12 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
Theory, as Žižek, Bordwell, and others have indicated, has come to sig-
nify a certain assortment of structuralism, poststructuralism, deconstruc-
tion, Althusserian Structuralism, post- Marxism, and so on, all of which
developed in the wake of the post- 1968 leftist turn in cultural theory and
the emergence of new social movements in politics. In other places (but
also according to Bordwell), Theory has come to mean “Grand Theory,”
or “Grand Narrative,” which in the work of postmodernists, such as Jean-
François Lyotard, has become a code word for arguments against Marxism
(“Grand Theory” seems to accomplish the same effect, for Bordwell, toward
psychoanalysis).28 For Žižek, then, Theory seems to be more specifically
associated with the Marxian method: dialectical materialism— something
of which he associates with his own Hegelian- Lacanian method.29
The problem with film theory, particularly psychoanalytic/Lacanian film
theory, is that it misconstrued its object of analysis. Film theory, like Theory
in general, must be aimed toward an analysis of ideology and not neces-
sarily at some kind of Truth- Knowledge about film and spectatorship—
that is, as some kind of objective knowledge about the latter. Within this
context, it is worth considering Žižek’s own thinking on film studies. In
his book, The Fright of Real Tears: Krzysztof Kieslowski between Theory and
Post- Theory (2001), Žižek takes aim at David Bordwell and Noël Carroll’s
anthology Post- Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996), a manifesto
of sorts that seeks primarily to debunk the supposed reign of Theory (capi-
tal T) in film studies; but Fright also seeks to rethink the project of Theory
in general and the place of cinema within this project.
My claim is that Žižek’s relevance in film studies is based not on his
rethinking of Lacan, as some have suggested, thereby enhancing a strictly
Lacanian film theory (this, however, is one of his accomplishments,
although perhaps unintentional), but rather, Žižek’s relevance to film stud-
ies comes by way of his rethinking of the project of Theory and the role of
film studies within this project. As a particular field of inquiry (as opposed
to a discipline), film Theory shares a specific object of analysis with other
branches of film studies, including post- Theory; however, it differs with
regards to the nature of the questions posed and the methodologies prac-
ticed in examining films. Questions posed with regards to film can be
either object based, seeking to know something specific about the film-
object, or subject based, seeking to understand something about the par-
ticular subject- position from which films are approached and interpreted
(including political interpretations). The difference between Theory and
post- Theory, then, according to Žižek, is that the former admits its own
particular subject- position, the position from which it examines the cin-
ema (for Žižek, this is the political position of the proletariat)— a position
that is subjective and knows itself to be so; the latter, however, does not,
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INTRODUCTION 13
and post- Theorists work under the guise of some kind of objective, neutral
knowledge toward its object.
The first chapter of this book looks at the development of Lacanian film
theory in the 1970s. Here, I also explain some of the key Lacanian concepts
used by film theorists in the 1970s, writing mainly in the British film jour-
nal Screen. These concepts include the “mirror stage,” the “gaze,” “suture,”
and the three orders of the Imaginary, Symbolic, and the Real. This chap-
ter concludes by examining some of the criticisms pitted against “screen
theory” by film scholars writing in the Post- Theory anthology. The second
chapter, then, elaborates on Žižek’s use of film examples in his endeavor to
articulate the contours of a Lacanian theory of ideology. Here, particular
focus is paid to Žižek’s interpretations of Hitchcock and Lynch.
Chapter 3 takes up the debate between Žižek and Bordwell. Using the
Lacanian matrix of the four discourses, I demonstrate the role of the class
struggle in thinking critically about the post- Theory perspective and the
way that it occupies the position of the ruling ideology. My arguments
in Chapter 3 set the tone for the next two chapters, in which I set out to
demonstrate Žižek’s approach to film analysis. Chapter 3 is followed by a
short interlude that looks at The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema in the context of
Žižek’s critique of ideology but also takes up Lacan’s discourse of the Ana-
lyst to expound on Žižek’s own position in this film as the analyst- pervert.
Chapter 4, then, addresses Žižek’s textual analysis of cinema and the way
that Žižek’s film analyses speak to the Symbolic fabric of ideology in every-
day reality. In Chapter 5, I then move on to a discussion of Žižek’s theory
of subjectivity and how it enables a new perspective on cinematic specta-
torship. In this chapter, I argue that— unlike “screen theory,” which claims
that films interpellate individuals as spectators/subjects— the cinema
interpellates subjects as spectators by reproducing a degree of enjoyment.
I would like to make two final points about Žižek’s film analysis. First,
my objective is not to rehash all the various cinematic examples provided
by Žižek. For instance, I have strategically excluded examples such as
Žižek’s reference to Night of the Living Dead (1968) or Alien (1979) in order
to explain the psychoanalytic concept of drive or the Thing (das Ding).
These are the kinds of examples that often get Žižek in trouble with film
scholars. What I intend in the following is, rather, to refer to those films
that truly give evidence toward Žižek’s own theory of film. The examples
cited are ones that demonstrate the way in which Žižek develops a critique
of ideology by way of the cinema. Therefore, particular attention is paid to
those films and directors that much more vocally express Žižek’s brand of
ideology critique.
Second, the reader will most likely notice a strong influence from the
work of Fredric Jameson in the pages that follow. While it is not my explicit
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14 THE SYMBOLIC, THE SUBLIME, AND SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S THEORY OF FILM
objective, here, to show the ties between the cultural criticism of Jameson
and Žižek, it is worth noting that, for me, Jameson’s historical materialist
cultural criticism provides the very “political unconscious” to Žižek’s psy-
choanalytic and dialectical theory of film. This is, however, a productive tie
and one that I believe advances a critical theory of ideology for film and
cultural theory.
In The Ticklish Subject (1999), Žižek notes that the universes of David
Lynch’s films are often tied together by a special ingredient: a signifying
chain structured by a particular phrase, which always returns. In Dune, it
is “The sleeper must awake”; in Twin Peaks, “The owls are not what they
seem”; in Blue Velvet, “Daddy wants to fuck”; and in Lost Highway, the
phrase that is both the first and last words spoken in the film, “Dick Lau-
rent is dead.” In the latter, the entire plot proceeds in the time between the
two moments when these words are spoken. At the beginning of the film,
the hero hears these words spoken on the receiving end of the intercom in
his house; at the end of the film, we see that it is he who speaks these words
into the intercom. The film, in this sense, is circular, and the whole film,
according to Žižek, “is based on the impossibility of the hero encountering
himself.”30 This circular trajectory parallels the psychoanalytic experience,
in which, at the beginning, the patient is troubled by some obscure, indeci-
pherable but persistent message— the symptom— which, as it were, bom-
bards him or her from outside; then, at the conclusion of the treatment, the
patient is able to assume this message as his or her own, to pronounce it in
the first person singular.31
The temporal loop that structures Lost Highway is, thus, the same tem-
poral loop that structures the psychoanalytic treatment, in which, after the
entire process of analysis, the subject returns to the same position but per-
ceives it from an entirely different perspective.
It is my hope that if, at the beginning of the present book, the reader
is struck by a certain feeling of despair and confusion— “What on Earth is
he talking about?” “Who is this Žižek fellow and why is he so important?”
“Shouldn’t film analysis remain strictly about formalism and studies of
authorship, genre, and national tradition?”— that by the end, she not only
is well versed in Žižekian theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis but also is
prepared to engage film criticism as a fully transformed revolutionary sub-
ject, having returned to the same position from which she began but from
an entirely different perspective.
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