What is "pure ideology"?

no, seriously. it's a drug. think about it.

>They are saying we are all losers, but the true losers are down there on Wall Street. They were bailed out by billions of our money. We are called socialists, but here there is already socialism — for the rich. They say we don’t respect private property. But in the 2008 financial crash-down more hard-earned private property was destroyed than if all of us here were to be destroying it night and day for weeks. They tell you we are dreamers; the true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are.
- Zizek at Occupy Wall Street

People shouldn't have taken out risky mortgages if they knew they'd struggle to pay them back.

And yet borrowers weren't bailed out, were they?

By your logic, the banks shouldn't have made risky loans they knew they wouldn't be repaid.

Let the borrower fail, let the lender fail, right?

Pure ideology is like when you're so high on ideology you become delusion and think you're a King, it's kind of like being on coke, except instead of a drug it comes from ideology.

Honestly pure ideology is the best shit ever, I recommend it to everyone I meet. Then again most people get cut as fuck ideology that doesn't even make your face numb and probably has baking soda in it; what's the fun of that?

Banks should have been punished for their reckless lending.

I think other posters have defined Ideology fairly well, particularly Ideology is a system that shapes how you see the world. Ideology is the realization that there is no objective or neutral position from which you can observe society.

Ideologies are philosophies, religions, scientific systems, social norms, laws and regulations, the commands of others, etc. They can be conscious or unconscious, and are often both.

But if your question is what is PURE ideology, Zizek tends to use the adjective Pure to describe a situation in which an ideological system is exerting a lot of influence, without the subject realizing it. Pure Ideology is Colonialism, or Absolute Monarchy, systems which never comprehended their own short comings, and took their perspective as entirely natural and obvious, as if there were no other way to perceive things.

In Zizek's sense of the term Ideology, there is no escaping ideology, everyone has it, but there are varying levels of awareness. To demonstrate this, he uses Donald Rumsfelds idea about Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, Unknown Unknowns and then Zizek's fourth term, Unknown Knowns, that completes the series. This fourth category, Unknown Knowns, the things we belief and act upon, without much consideration or awareness, is Pure Ideology or Unconscious Ideology.

...

The government backed those loans

The Big Other is not ideology. The Big Other is like an imaginary audience.

Ideology are the things we don't know we know, we take some fact or framework as granted without being aware of it. The Big Other is closer to virtue signalling or karma.

>>
>In Zizek's sense of the term Ideology, there is no escaping ideology, everyone has it, but there are varying levels of awareness. To demonstrate this, he uses Donald Rumsfelds idea about Known Knowns, Known Unknowns, Unknown Unknowns and then Zizek's fourth term, Unknown Knowns, that completes the series. This fourth category, Unknown Knowns, the things we belief and act upon, without much consideration or awareness, is Pure Ideology or Unconscious Ideology.

This was my understanding of Pure Ideology too, but it raises a question: what is Zizek's foundation for what is, so to speak, "the real thing"? In other words, what does he believe you will see when you take off the glasses? From what I've read and watched of him, he's not at core anti-foundationalist/ anti-essentialist, because he has given other people (Judith Butler, etc) that label and distinguished himself from them. He still holds himself out as a Marxist, so is it the struggle against capitalism? He's so cagey and ironic from what I've seen in his videos and lectures that I can't really tell.

The idea that you don't have any ideology is itself an ideology - the purest form of ideology.

What about the one with the transient ideology, he who constantly consumes and re-articulates it? Simply possessing ideology does not mean one is necessarily ruled by it: full ownership of an ideology would entail the reverse.

>tfw ur dealer chops u out some wack as ideology and u start tripping about changing the world by buying as many socially responsible starbucks coffees as possible

Prepare your solar anuses, lads:

"Ideology is a fantasy-construct aimed at concealing the essential inconsistency of the sociopolitical field. The fundamental ideological fantasy, therefore, is always some version of the idea that society constitutes an organic, cohesive and undivided whole.

By defining society as impossible, strangely enough, the new doctrine thus gives itself an unfailing measuring stick to redefine ideology in terms of a structural misrecognition - this time not of some concrete reality hidden behind the veil of false consciousness, but, rather, of the fact that ideology conceals nothing at all, the 'nothing' of the structure which 'is' the subject.

As Laclau writes in New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time: 'The ideological would not consist of the misrecognition of a positive essence, but exactly the opposite: it would consist of the non-recognition of the precarious character of any positivity, of the impossibility of any ultimate suture.' Totalitarian ideologies, for instance, fail to acknowledge the empty place of power, which in democracy constitutes the paradoxical object-cause of all political struggles. The critique of ideology, therefore, can no longer consist only in unmasking the particular vested interests hidden behind the false appearances of universality. Instead, two rather different tasks impose themselves, which can be compared to the ends of the psychoanalytic cure as discussed by Zizek.

The aim is, first, a traversing of the fantasy, in order to acknowledge how an ideology merely fills out a traumatic void in the midst of the social field and, second, in order that the symbolic order does not disintegrate altogether, the identification with the symptom, with the piece of surplus-enjoyment which continues to resist even after the dismantling of the fundamental fantasy, and which thus somehow gives body to the radical inconsistency of society itself. This obscene enjoyment, which attaches itself to the symptom and is ultimately nothing but pure death drive pulsating around the central emptiness in the midst of the symbolic order, cannot be overcome by means of an old-style symptomal reading of ideology, nor even by a revolutionary social change.

As Zizek writes about the drive to enjoyment which, like our human condition, is the uItimate pre- ideological support of all ideology: 'The thing to do is not to “overcome”, to “abolish” it, but to come to terms with it, to learn to recognize it in its terrifying dimension and then, on the basis of this fundamental recognition, to try to articulate a modus vivendi with it.' What Zizek thus adds to Laclau's cleaner deconstructive version of structural causality is the obscene passionate enjoyment that is the dark underside, or the nightly obverse, of the lack in the symbolic order." - The Silent Partners

The above will either seem to you like total gobblegook, may actually make sense, or perhaps some combination of both.

I'd agree with this if it weren't for these hollowed-out concepts of "drive to enjoyment" or "death drive" that are employed. I think that evolutionary psychology provides a way more solid foundation for analyzing what are the fundamental motives of humanity - the old "state of nature" that the Enlightenment sought after.

>The above will either seem to you like total gobblegook, may actually make sense, or perhaps some combination of both.
He could have put it much more concisely and simply. It seems to me he's pointing out that Zizek built on the criticism of ideology as "nothing" by trying to find out where the individual desires toward these "nothings" come from.

So it's basically culture?

When culture owns you, rather than you possessing culture, that is ideology. E.g. "Trump will fight Jewish degeneracy," "Bernie will reform the system," "Hillary is the only qualified candidate," "I can't believe [My Favorite Sports Team] lost last night," etc. More basically, whenever you take a cultural "side" that is not your own.

Our 'state of nature' is civilization itself. You're looking for what Zizek is arguing against, which is this essence that gives meaning to the incompleteness of reality, forget it.

I think it's incomprehensible, or impossible to be without ideology. I swear he went on this with "the third pill" video.

It's bait.

Surplus enjoyment - this is I believe what is called "jouissance" - and its implications are baked all the way in with Zizek (and Lacan, and Freud...) and there's really no getting away from it in that system. It's not the only way to look at these things: Deleuze has different opinions on this, but Deleuze is the arch-nemesis of the Lacanians (though Lacan himself actually liked him quite a lot).

Anyways, it's a very modernist perspective on human nature, with its own rules and systems and terms. If you subscribe to the Freudian stuff the rest of it follows from there. But people have been going back and forth on Freud forever. Anyone who claims to have looked behind the veil about this kind of stuff kind of brings it on themselves.

>continental philosophy
>concisely and simply

It is nothing, or more precisely, a lack or lost object. That missing part or piece is the whole enchilada, the thing that appears to be missing from the world but is really only missing from you. Pretty basic but like many such things only seems obvious in retrospect after somebody's dedicated their whole life to it (and then it becomes cliche, or is dismissed as pseudoscience).

A lot of it has to do with the language used as well. 'Desire' implies a lot of different things. It also combines well with Zizek's political/cultural analysis as well. Although he could be a practicing analyst somewhere his thing is more about diagnosing the ills of capitalism and modernity and mass culture, which is where his inner Hegelian and political sensibilities and so on manifest.

Everything is "pure ideology".

I don't think so - and this is part of why I consider the left-liberal programme of freeing people from the "artificial" constraints of society is a fundamentally flawed one. It's not going to lead to more freedom of choice, only for the more fundamental parts of human social mores and sexuality, conditioned by millenia of evolution, to express themselves more vividly (as mediated by technology, of course, such as contraception). Our very ability to inform our actions with social mores is a great freedom thanks to the plasticity of our minds compared to those of other animals (yeah, I'm basically saying that spooks are freedom).

The essence that'd give meaning to reality would be Darwinian selection, nothing more - the ability to survive and propagate. It'd be the only thing that is really true in and of itself.

>this is part of why I consider the left-liberal programme of freeing people from the "artificial" constraints of society is a fundamentally flawed one.

Both me and Zizek argue otherwise, we should be more artificial.

> It's not going to lead to more freedom of choice, only for the more fundamental parts of human social mores and sexuality, conditioned by millenia of evolution, to express themselves more vividly

They express themselves in various ways already in society.

>Our very ability to inform our actions with social mores is a great freedom thanks to the plasticity of our minds compared to those of other animals (yeah, I'm basically saying that spooks are freedom).

I agree.

I think "desire" works well in this context because ideology exists specifically as an expression of something pined for that cannot be attained. I mean the old sense of desire, more akin to the Latin "desiderare": to await what the stars will bring.

if what you got out of this is pure ideology is just culture then kys my man.

>darwinian selection
>survive and propagate
fellate a gun

Well, what's a more accurate description of it then?

That's a beautiful thought.

Heidegger makes a similar distinction too, between waiting and awaiting; there's a kind of passive waiting, where you're just kind of there expecting that which you desire to either happen or not happen (and, as such, you may be in a trap). Conversely there is a kind of meditative-attentive stance towards things, where you're not really sure what's going to happen, but you're invested in those possibilities, and just by giving a thing your attention you may allow it to reveal itself, whatever it is. That was the kind of stuff that really swayed me when I read B&T - and Heidegger's phenomenology was an influence on Lacan as well.

This kind of thing is in Voegelin's work as well, although I've only started taking a look at him. But he writes about this, the danger of immanentizing the eschaton, of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. It's stuff Zizek also writes about, this idea that the essence of ideology is a kind of *closure* that is always kind of a fantasy, this sense of tying things up neatly in a bow. It's why Zizek/Lacan are so popular in film studies, because cinema is the ideological art form par excellence of the 20C; films *must* wrap things up completely at the end of a three-act structure. But there's no end of subtle ideological magic done in the conclusion of a film, to create this sense of closure, of things neatly presented and Just So. Some filmmakers do it better than others, of course.

But I'm with you, user. Especially if you're trying to escape the vicious circle of ideology. Better to, as you say, await what the stars will bring. That's really a lovely thought.

Well, freedom is a spook, so I guess that makes sense in a way. But I'd caution that this "ability to inform our actions with social mores" (ethics) isn't necessarily "good," because sometimes it suits one more to be thoughtless. Though honestly I'm not sure whether you're saying it is a "good," casting ethics as a "great freedom" is odd to me. Ethics seem more a way to puzzle out the most suitable conclusion, and since this is a thoughtful exercise, it must be at the expense of physical freedom. When I'm thinking "I must lift to get big," I am not doing the lifting unless the aforesaid is my mantra.

It would give no "essence" to reality, that's the point of this thread. The "essence" is the perceived lack: it cannot be righted except through your perception of its fantastical nature.

That waiting/awaiting distinction is interesting, it sheds some light for me on the possibility of positive/negative suffering. I like to go back to the roots of words, especially Latin (e.g. "virtute" from which "virtue" is derived literally meant "power"), and patience is one such: its former meaning was "suffering through." I lately have been thinking of this as a negative thing, a sort of wanton, self-inflicted suffering, but your post has brought to my mind that video of Zizek explaining why it's better to be interesting than happy. If I want to write diligently and well, I must occasionally pause (be patient) and await the proper word for the phrase to strike me. Veeky Forums by its anonymous nature inhibits this ability in me: I'm more apt to post stream-of-consciousness hocus-pocus because I know I don't have to take responsibility for my writing.

>It's why Zizek/Lacan are so popular in film studies, because cinema is the ideological art form par excellence of the 20C; films *must* wrap things up completely at the end of a three-act structure.

This is why I enjoy films. They are ideological concentrate, which is probably why DFW described them as "authoritarian." A book one can put down; a film exists under its own power. One may pause it, but that's only a postponement of the ensuing subjugation. It takes much more willpower to close one's obduracy off to a parade of motion that imitates reality than a collection of "mere" words. At least the words don't jump up at you.

What exactly do you mean by physical freedom? All thought must be grounded in a system that has physical properties, and you said that freedom is a spook. I think you're thinking in false dichotomies.

I simply meant it's difficult to be entirely contemplative and entirely physical at the same time. I, for instance, could not harvest crops by hand while giving serious consideration to the Phenomology of Spirit. That's not to say I never think while working physically, nor is it to say no one could do hold both of those ideas in their heads simultaneously for a great length of time, but whoever could would be much smarter than myself.

Patience as suffering through makes sense. It's all fucking suffering in the end really. Self-imposed to varying degrees. Sometimes mimetically imposed upon others, consciously or otherwise. But that's another topic.

>Veeky Forums by its anonymous nature inhibits this ability in me: I'm more apt to post stream-of-consciousness hocus-pocus because I know I don't have to take responsibility for my writing.

Yup. Although I find this place isn't as anonymous as I would like sometimes! And strangely enough, people are in spite of all of that anonymity usually open to more interesting conversations here than I often find in real life, where there is all kind of real-world contingency, buzzing phones and whatnot...I prefer being a disembodied mind.

>ideological concentrate

That's pretty much it. I used to want to be a screenwriter, and it was actually meditating on these questions that got me hooked into philosophy (why do the good guys have to defeat the bad guys, anyways?). Also now there are even more immersive forms of media, like video games, that are going to change the dynamics of this stuff again. Games don't require plots in quite the same way that cinema does, and may require new forms of critique...

I still think about screenwriting but I feel as though a little too spooked after all this reading to be able to believe in the illusions and psychic manipulations anymore. Maybe someday I'll try again. I still think it actually is a good exercise, though to produce, as you say, 'ideological concentrate.' Even though you know it's bunk, to take the writer's journey and all that, slay the dragon or rescue Pinocchio or whatever the fuck.
Produce ideology as psychotherapy, at least get it on the page so it's not jamming up your love life. Makes sense, I suppose.

One of the other things too is that there is a temptation in Freudo-Marxist criticism to be a little too hard on 'mass culture' - as if there is (outside of reactionary aesthetic types) any real alternative. Maybe more appreciation for how much sweat and tears goes into producing these illusions would help too...it's fucking hard to make a good illusion!

But they didn't, that is the whole fucking point. Why is even your argument?

>Although I find this place isn't as anonymous as I would like sometimes!

Kek you do have a very recognizable posting style Girardfag

Apparently so!

I read this today btw, was very good.
undpress.nd.edu/books/P03056

>And strangely enough, people are in spite of all of that anonymity usually open to more interesting conversations here than I often find in real life, where there is all kind of real-world contingency, buzzing phones and whatnot...I prefer being a disembodied mind.
You need to find the right kind of people. I only have one friend I hang out with consistently, and we do nothing more or less than talk. I mean, this past weekend we talked for almost ten hours straight, not resorting to alcohol until the last three. Watched Network (1976) for the first time, it was quite enjoyable, especially when one of us would start talking over the film and we'd pause it to have a mini-conversation on criticism. Nothing beats connecting with a real human.

>I still think about screenwriting but I feel as though a little too spooked after all this reading to be able to believe in the illusions and psychic manipulations anymore
I'm actually working on a screenplay right now, at least, helping with the rewrite which is going to be significant. Honestly (I'll probably get accused of memery for this) Stirner helped me understand the "only" story: every narrative is about the varying degrees of egoism (in the sense of "only-one-ness") in people. I find that the trick to crafting an appealing narrative is to end in a way that's concrete but doesn't prescribe an -- ideology. I like the example set by David Lynch, e.g. at the end of Twin Peaks. While he had to wrap up most of the side stories in a rather abrupt fashion, the main narrative ended the only way it could have, and the only thing it admonished against was, in my view, half-egoism. It didn't even do that strongly, i.e. it didn't say "half-egoism is always bad," but the ending was still incredibly forceful because it showed what happened to someone who defined himself by his profession and lost it. It was a wonderful tragedy.

I agree that Adorno and the like are much too derisive of the "culture industry." Whether or not jazz is less "complex" than "classical" music, it is a valid springboard for at least criticism. I'm also piecing together a lengthy criticism of the Canadian show Heartland that boils its premise down to "only a maiden who is pure of heart can safely tame all beasts" and linking it through cinematography to art from the Middle Ages depicting unicorns. Though I struggle to find merit in many tent-pole pictures (capeshit in particular). There's nothing to criticize when the dialogue is just banter framed around the tired old "Support your country/species/family" shtick.

Ugh. Network is such a masterpiece.

>you have meddled with the primal forces of nature Mr. Beale, and i will not have it

I've been fortunate enough to have had friends like that, people you can just talk to for hours about literature and such. You're right, about that.

>I find that the trick to crafting an appealing narrative is to end in a way that's concrete but doesn't prescribe an -- ideology.

That is indeed the puzzle. Not to shill for my Veeky Forums handle or anything here but Girard actually does have some stuff you might find interesting about this, how the difference between average literature and great literature is the kind of reckoning authors have with desire, the novelistic sensibility at its highest form being an understanding of how desire is psychologically understood and these insights revealed. And it's all there in the conclusions of books, how the ending is handled. It's in DD&N. If that kind of stuff is interesting to you, I don't know. And in cinema Network qualifies for that status for me, no question.

The ending of the Sopranos was no joke either, I was just watching some scenes from that the other day. That whole show was brilliantly done. No memery involved.

Anyways: endings. It's all about endings.

>I agree that Adorno and the like are much too derisive of the "culture industry."
Yeah. Victim of his time too, he knew what the sixties were about to set on fire.

>Though I struggle to find merit in many tent-pole pictures (capeshit in particular). There's nothing to criticize when the dialogue is just banter framed around the tired old "Support your country/species/family" shtick.

Yessir. I don't like everything Sam Kriss writes but he had a decent take on this.

thebaffler.com/latest/iron-fist-kriss

Not always, mind. I thought the trailer for Deadpool 2 was so fun precisely because the writers are so alert to irony, all the little cues (that little bit with 'St. Elmo's Fire' was brilliant) - but yeah, there may be a kind of fatigue there. We're just so hip to it now. I'm still blown away by the spectacle, of course, and the films are interesting for other reasons. Game of Thrones is reliably excellent. So was Mad Men.

So as much as I like Baudrillard, for instance, I can't really hate on a lot of mass culture, it's often tremendously well-executed. It's an embarrassment of riches more than anything.

/pol/

Also, I hope you finish that screenplay. 'Tis said that writing is re-writing.

For what it's worth I've read a couple of books on the subject. Offhand the ones that come to mind as being interesting are

Screenplay, Syd Field
The Tools of Screenwriting, Howard & Mabley
Story, Bob Mckee
Save the Cat, Blake Snyder
The Writer's Journey, Christopher Vogler

...and of course the Hero with Four Billion Faces. But you would have known about that one already. I went through the motions with mine, doing the forty index cards and all the beats and everything. It was a fun thought process and I actually cranked out a manuscript after doing it in a fairly short period of time. It was absolute garbage and will never see the light of day but I actually produced it, so there must be something in the process.

>Our very ability to inform our actions with social mores is a great freedom thanks to the plasticity of our minds compared to those of other animals (yeah, I'm basically saying that spooks are freedom).
No you basically said you are free to indulge in any spook, which is suprise suprise what Striner said anyway