Things I Believe In
- Thread starter josef k.
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Zizek talks about this at length in The Sublime Object: capitalism relies on cynical subjects because they are more likely to "play along" with capitalist ideology even if they know they are being exploited. In other words, cynics like doing things they know are stupid/wrong/mostly stupid 
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Zizek says this applies to everyone, even in cases where we don't realize it. I'll look up the citation later (don't have the course reader on me atm), but this is the response I wrote last week: "For Zizek, ideology is entirely external: it has nothing to do with "false consciousness," or any internalized belief system, but instead exists as a kind of total inscription that envelops everything: "[ideology] is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as 'ideological'" (21). But then we must ask ourselves, where does ideology originate if it is always-already external? In other words, if it isn't mirrored internally, how is it ever reproduced, how does it persist? Zizek offers the compelling example of the Tibetan prayer wheel to illustrate his point: the devotee has only to spin the wheel to pray; faith doesn't require any kind of "real" belief. In the same vein, it makes no difference whether we believe in capitalist ideology. As long as we participate in capitalist reality, we are capitalists. In fact, postmodern capitalism depends on this internalized cynicism – where we realize we are taking part in an illusion, but continue to do it nonetheless - combined with a kind of self-disavowal. Zizek seems to assume that this cynicism is implied, and not explicit, and that we are always playing some kind of role. But if you look at advertising, or reality media, this kind of cynicism is very explicit. In fact I would go so far as to say it is shoved down our collective throats. Reality television, for example, makes explicit the idea that (capitalist) reality is a competition where everyone is deceiving everyone else, and where often the parameters of the game itself are a ruse (Joe the Millionaire, etc.). In this case, capitalism depends not on an externalized ideological fantasy, or an interpellated set of beliefs, but on the interzone of the media spectacle, which contains both. Reality television, tabloid media, etc collectivize the individual while individualizing the collective. My point is that capitalism still relies on some kind of internalization on the part of the consumer, which means that it can be altered by changing one's beliefs, perceptions and so on. In other words, the joke only works if you think it's funny."
I am not sure what to say to that. Let me try cutting it up:
(don't have the course reader on me atm)
a kind of total inscription that envelops everything:
(Joe the Millionaire, etc.)
the interzone of the media spectacle
**
Who is Joe the Millionaire?
And what is the interzone? This is a Burroughs term, no?
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"LOUIS ALTHUSSER builds on the work of Jacques Lacan to understand the way ideology functions in society. He thus moves away from the earlier Marxist understanding of ideology. In the earlier model, ideology was believed to create what was termed "false consciousness," a false understanding of the way the world functioned (for example, the suppression of the fact that the products we purchase on the open market are, in fact, the result of the exploitation of laborers). Althusser explains that for Marx "Ideology is [...] thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status of the dream among writers before Freud. For those writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null, result of the 'day's residues'" (Lenin 108). Althusser, by contrast, approximates ideology to Lacan's understanding of "reality," the world we construct around us after our entrance into the symbolic order. (See the Lacan module on the structure of the psyche.) For Althusser, as for Lacan, it is impossible to access the "Real conditions of existence" due to our reliance on language; however, through a rigorous"scientific" approach to society, economics, and history, we can come close to perceiving if not those "Real conditions" at least the ways that we are inscribed in ideology by complex processes of recognition. Althusser's understanding of ideology has in turn influenced a number of important Marxist thinkers, including Chantalle Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Zizek, and Fredric Jameson. (See, for comparison, the Jameson module on ideology.)"
What would you advise?
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these are not monolithic statements. in fact it's a rebuttal of Zizek. as for an advisable approach, your critique could be more like my professors (Chris Kocela), and less like [...]: "Wes: Yes, I agree that a certain degree of internalization is necessary for the reproduction of ideological fantasy--something I think Z. would also agree with on a fundamental level, although he radicalizes the external nature of it here so as to establish the maximum contrast with the conventional Marxian idea of "false consciousness." I'm not sure what you mean by "self-disavowal" as a part of cynical participation: what do we disavow here, and do you mean disavowal in the conventional sense or in the specifically psychoanalytic sense of simulatenous affirmation and denial?"
i agreed with your critique josef, as always, but i think Dr. Kocela is off here: ofc i mean the psychoanalytic/Freudian sense of disavowal, what else would i mean?
i agreed with your critique josef, as always, but i think Dr. Kocela is off here: ofc i mean the psychoanalytic/Freudian sense of disavowal, what else would i mean?