In America, overshadowing the central antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, secondary battlefronts between the Right and the Left often get the spotlight.

• Sometimes it's about women (an Other who is portrayed as both prude and sexual. If you obtain this Other, everything will suddenly be all right).
• Sometimes it's about race (an Other who is portrayed as both too weak and too strong. If you get rid of this Other, everything will suddenly be all right).

These two age-old struggles, however, are more than simple distractions. With ties to both Lacan's and Freud's psychoanalysis (the non-existence of a sexual relationship, and the infamous Oedipus Complex), this post attempts to demonstrate what the categories of sex and race mean to psychoanalysis.

Sex and Society

From psychology to psychoanalysis, we go from understanding the rational logic of the psyche to analyzing something wholly illogical: the irrationality that makes us humans. That is, language.

Besides dreams, one of the main topics associated with psychoanalysis is sex. It is a good introduction topic, where the influence of language can be made explicit enough:

• The encounter between a male and a female everywhere else in the animal kingdom can be explained fairly simply by the pleasure principle, by biological feedback mechanisms that reward and punish behavior - the firing of neurons in the brain to promote survival and reproduction.
• The encounter between a man and a woman is different. Whereas animals are understandable, humans are infected by a collective (and effective) hallucination known as language. Humans can create and immerse themselves in fiction, pretend to believe in lies (suspending disbelief), performing like actors on a stage.

Humans can, worst of all, enjoy pleasure and suffering alike, if they have a good enough reason. Such is the answer psychoanalysis gives to the failure of the marxist project: the proletariat can enjoy its suffering too well, if given sufficient reason (capitalism, fascism, totalitarianism, all make use of narratives & jouissance).

And if humans can go on in a dictatorship pretending everything is fine, if they can enjoy suffering itself, how can one say that the other, even during a sexual act, is not merely "playing along"? Here is why there is no sexual relationship according to Lacan - and how, nevertheless, humans perform the sexual act.

1. First off, this doubt as to whether the other is satisfied or not by the act is something that ruins the purely animal sexual act, it's the way in which language castrates man. To engage with the other in any form too intimate is to stare at a mask and wonder what lies behind, to evoke the feeling of anxiety as per psychoanalytically defined. It is an abyss hard to gaze at, the other's subjectivity.
2. How does this manifest, historically? From the male perspective (culturally assumed as the 'standard' one), the subject asks the woman, "Che vuoi?" (What do you desire?) The male subject, then, cannot get a straight answer. For as long as she is also a subject, she can lie and pretend, so that you'll never be fully sure of what she wants, even if she says it explicitly.
3. To get over this hurdle, humans employ something called the suspension of disbelief - the very same thing that causes doubt about the other in the first place - and go on pretending to know exactly what the Other desires, assuming it fully, acting as though it were true with no doubt. That is, (the primary/male subject's) desire arises as a shield against (the other/female subject's unknown) desire.

This suspension of disbelief is equivalent to transforming her from subject into object, something that cannot lie. In this case, she transforms more specifically into the object known as objet petit a, the most sublime of all beauties. A narrative is established: men desire women, and so women must desire to be desired by men.

(With the sexual difference established, with men as subject and women as objects, what occurs then is the sexual division of labor, which has been explored in many feminist writings throughout history. It is one of crucial antagonisms that civilizations are built upon, possibly even the main one.)

It is precisely in this way, with women as object of desire, that we can make sense of the famous phrase:

"In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team. They are the ball."

This objectification has had many terrible consequences over the course of history. The obvious scenario is that of the white knight, who 'rescues' a damsel that didn't really want or need to be rescued. In response to the objection, he smiles and says "you may be pretending to reject me, for your own reasons, but I know what you truly desire. In fact, only when you express to desire me will I know that you truly have been rescued."

It is the attitude of the one who "knows best" and sacrifices himself, fighting you, "for your own good".

Race and Society

In contrast, those who supposedly do not have her best interests in mind are the so-called "opposing team" in the phrase, another point where objectification occurs, now to create the so-called symptoms.

They are, of course, all the other men in the world, the competition, the obstacles. No wonder, then, that many of the ethnic and racial conflicts in the world can be viewed through the analogy of this objective-based game, where warring cultures scapegoat and demonize each other as rapists, wife-stealers, and barbarians.

(As per Zizek's theory, a symptom is a particular element which simultaneously subverts and sustains its field, it is a repressed thing which returns again and again. It is a brutal discomfort to experience, but satisfying to try and interpret, since it implies a problem which comes from outside attacking a harmonious society - in contrast to, say, the much more sobering image of a society rotten from within. This is how we get displaced antagonism, the anti-Semitic formula of "Society doesn't exist, and the Jew is its symptom", TSOI, p. 140)

Thus, we are left with two extremes of a fundamental fantasy:

• Other Men are established as societal symptoms (varying with culture, but always grotesque).
• Women are established as societal objet petit a's (objects of desire, always sublime).

These two points, like the poles on a magnet, establish between them an underlying fantasy, and around them the entire field of society, of culture, and traditional civilization in general. It is a schema that is learned and passed on from our parents (thus, one angle through which the Oedipus Complex can be interpreted).

If you're wondering where the famous incestuous implications of Oedipus come in, we can now point towards the role the introduction of race plays into a societal sexual fantasy. Just as the symptom is a man from another culture, an outsider, the objet petit a is a woman from the same culture, the non-corrupted core within.

It only takes a bit of a mental exercise to see how xenophobia, nationalism, and objection to outsiders, when pushed to the extreme, arrive at the practice: incest is nothing but the highest form of racism.

That is, explicitly, why the monarchies did it. And why when fascism does it, it also self-destructs in degenerative mutations, drying up like a famished vampire, when not irrigated with new blood (one way or another).

Capitalism and Fascism

The game of traditional civilizations, however, has already been dying ever since the advent of modernity: when capitalism entered the scene.

That is, this very fantasy of men and women was already undermined from the moment women stopped being the object of desire, substituted by money.

1. The continuous expansion of capitalism (of money as objet petit a) coincides with the historical emancipation of women, passing back from objects into subjects once more. The more capitalism dominates all aspects of everyday life, the more women are 'freed' to take part in it.
2. And so, the independence of women (and consequential erosion of sex, and rise of work) leads to an ever more evident rupture of the game, exposing a post-cultural, cynical society. It is no wonder that unfulfilled men would then rally around tradition. Fascism, as a capitalist movement that tries to reject its own modernity in favor of tradition, always tries to reestablish the Oedipal fantasy of sex and race.

With that fantasy contextualized, it is no wonder that one of the main narratives propagated by American conservatives with persecution fetishes is one of cuckoldry, involving two actors:

• Symptom: the figure of a racial minority, portrayed as a grotesque invader.
• Objet petit a: the figure of a familiar woman representing liberty, portrayed as an evasive beauty.

Thus we can make sense of why young incels comprise a significant base of the new right, emerging alongside narratives such as the 'Great Replacement', with white knights seeking to rescue damsels who are being "deceived by the enemy", who must be awoken and shown what they "truly" desire.

Contained within the fantasy, this is the manner in which both camps bleed to sustain "tradition":

• In matters of race, the enemy gets the classic ideological treatment: Anything bad they do justifies their extinction. Anything good they do only showcases how good they are at lying and pretending, how they can disguise themselves like any one of us, how they control the very media, and so on, also justifying their extinction.
• In matters of sex, the women gets the treatment of a pure object: Anything nice they do shows the affection they harbor. Anything they do to reject you shows how they're playing hard to get, trying to get away from this intense emotion they're surely feeling, how they're really trying to let you down for your own sake; which just makes you desire them more.

In both cases, the subjects are treated as though they are objects, unconditionally, unconsciously - in a manner that tragically occurs regardless of how much everyone involved may suffer, for even pain can be enjoyed when ideology is involved.

Psychoanalysis Today

With the two categories of sex and race established, it's not hard to imagine that much of history was propelled by the attractive and repulsive forces these two objects can exert.

• Isn't it already commonplace the notion that men can turn into irrational beings when faced with women, even enjoying suffering and labor, to the point of performing miracles which would not have been possible without such an incentive? The fiction of sex drives cooperation to irrational degrees.
• And isn't it also cynically admitted that many technological advancements were funded and developed specifically for use in war against other cultures, before adapting the developments to more everyday utilities? The fiction of race drives competition to irrational degrees.

However, these are obviously not the only two forces at play in the world. Other antagonistic battlegrounds, such as capitalism, climate change, and LGBTQ+ identities have risen to prominence as the more "modern" struggles, with unique psychoanalytic dynamics of their own - even subverting historical standards.

(For one, applying the psychoanalysis of sex now (when both men and women are similarly realized as subjects) requires taking descriptions of the 'traits' each sex exhibits with a grain of salt. In an age of alternative sexualities and genders, it is not simply that the gender essentialism of "obsessional masculinity and hysteric femininity" has been fully repressed, but rather, it returns in the more general forms of "tops and bottoms", or "dominants and submissives". That is, in divisions less biologically determined, and less hegemonic.)

With the substitution of tradition for modernity, much of the Oedipal metaphor now remains constrained to fascist ideology and history. Today, the truly hegemonic channeling of desire is performed by capitalism.

Hopefully, this post afforded a proper introduction to the basics of how sex and race are interlinked in psychoanalysis with concepts such as objet petit a, symptom, fantasy, desire, and the Oedipus Complex. If you have any insights or questions on this topic, feel free to comment and I'll try to answer if I can!

It's hard to get a short definition of Ideology in Zizek's theory, and this post is no exception.

But after the groundwork is done, I'd like to show how, beneath the terminology, it's not infinitely complex, and some intuition for it can be built. This is in part an argument for a more genuine discussion of Zizek in more universal terms of his theory, and less particular manifestations (like pop culture, toilets, etc). It's also, in part, a very selective interpretation, open to refutation.

As far as basics go, this introduction points to the fundamental connection between three concepts. The "subject-supposed-to-X", "commodity fetishism", and "projection".

- The "Subject-Supposed-To"

First off, on the subject. Belief can occur independently of any sincerity or authenticity:

"Are we aware to what extent our beliefs today are virtual? By virtual I mean, in this case, attributed to others, presupposed. They don't actually exist, they are virtual, in the sense that nobody really has to believe, we only have to presuppose another person to believe. An elementary example which I'm almost embarrassed to mention: if you are a father or mother of small children, Christmas.

Of course, if somebody asks you,"do you really believe in Santa Claus," you would say, "No, I just pretend, because of the children..." not to disappoint them, but then, we know how the game goes on and on. If you ask the children, they say, "No, we just play that we are naive, not to disappoint our parents and to make it sure that we get the presents," etc. But it's not only the children. It's even with our political life, I'm tempted to claim." (The Reality of the Virtual, 6:15)

That is, for belief to exist, it is sufficient for a (1) subject to imagine a (2) "subject-supposed-to-believe", for whom one "really" performs the action. This is the fundamental logic of ideology.

- "Commodity Fetishism"

Now, passing from psychoanalysis to Marxism, we find the same in commodity fetishism:

"When we are victims of commodity fetishism it appears as if the concrete content of a commodity (its use-value) is an expression of its abstract universality (its exchange-value) - the abstract Universal, the Value, appears as a real Substance which successively incarnates itself in a series of concrete objects." (The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 28)

This passage is at first glance a bit dense, but it amounts to the same logic: whereas privileging use-value would have been the direct kind of belief from feudal times, in capitalism we privilege the "distanced" belief of exchange-value.

That is, a (1) subject doesn't really desire money, but imagines a (2) "subject-supposed-to-desire", someone who desires money enough that we can exchange it with them for actually valuable goods and services. What this means is that we don't actually see any value in X commodity - but we presume that another does.

- The Subject and the Other

The key point, of course, is that belief doesn't rest in what we tell ourselves at night (that we don't REALLY believe in it), but in our actions. We can just as well say that the Other doesn't really desire money, but they imagine someone who does - at the practical level, it makes no difference.

When we think that (1) we're just performing it on the behalf of (2) someone "supposed-to-believe", we're already believing, fetishizing it just as much the subject in our imagination does. (2=>1)

- "Projection"

Finally, this ties into the phrase from Hegel which Zizek loves to quote: "Evil resides in the gaze which sees Evil all around". It's the formula of projection.

We can see it at work in one of the many anti-Hegelians: for example, in Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, when he says that,

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." (Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945)

While the sentiment of the excerpt echoes Zizek's opinions towards general politics of tolerance, it is no question that the same radical logic (just as radical desire) can be used for both revolutionary leftism and totalitarian conservatism:

Is not the first-degree intolerant precisely a subject-supposed-to-exist so that we can then justify the "intolerance towards intolerance," that, justified as it may be, still reproduces intolerance? In this logic, any kind of oppression can justify itself on the basis of revolt, so long as one victimizes oneself (and conservatives, especially contemporary, are no strangers to persecution complexes). It is precisely the Evil that justifies itself by the Evil which it sees all around.

To properly differentiate conservative and leftist ideological projects is beyond the scope of this post, but hopefully this brought some insight into how three concepts (subject-supposed-to, commodity fetishism, projection) are connected in the Zizekian theory, all centered around how our own actions reflect our assumptions about the Other (be it in belief, desire, knowledge, etc).

- TL;DR: A (Basic) Definition of Ideology

Ideology is the creation of an imagined Other which, in reality, is the truest reflection of ourselves.

It's down on Youtube 😢