I came to Žižek, too, because of some of the questions I had previously about the Althusserian conception of ideology and ideological interpellation. Having spent a lot of time studying the Althusser-inspired film theory of the 1970s, I came to question (and I’m being reductive here for the sake of brevity) the notion that cinema, for example, “zaps” ideology directly into the mind of the audience. I also found much of the discourse theory approaches unsatisfying. Žižek’s Lacanian inspired conception of ideology, subjectivity, and enjoyment helped, then, to fill in some of the gaps that I felt were missing in the Althusserian account; for instance, the fact that for Althusser, the subject is a product of ideology (i.e., “ideology interpellates individuals as subjects”), whereas on the Lacanian account, the subject emerges where ideology fails – for me, this formula provides critical insights for ways to imagine the relationship between criticism, interpretation, and political practice.

Furthermore, by taking enjoyment into consideration, Žižek helps to show some of the weaknesses in the post-Cold War notions of the “end of history” or the “end of ideology,” on both the Left and the right, and how cynicism – or what Peter Sloterdijk refers to as “enlightened false consciousness” – is the very form of ideology in postmodern late/neoliberal capitalism. Cynicism allows the subject to acknowledge the futility of attempts to transform the system, while still taking some kind of unconscious pleasure from failing to achieve the desired goal. These are points that I cover in my first book, The Symbolic, The Sublime, and Slavoj Žižek’s Theory of Film (Palgrave Macmillan 2012).

Joe and Jordy: How do you connect your politics with your theoretical practice?

Matthew: Through Žižek (and this is by no means unique to him), I’ve come to see theory itself as tied to politics or political action, and especially his defence of Marxist and Lacanian theory against a school of film scholarship referred to as post-theory or “middle-level theory,” that shies away from asking big questions about the relationship between cinema and the social totality. So for me, Theory is key to any broader Leftist action. It is tied up with what Jameson has called “cognitive mapping,” which he later on admitted was a coded way of talking about class consciousness. I see both the work of Jameson and Žižek as closely related to that of the young Lukács, who understood the role of historical materialism – and the identification of the subject and object of history – in mapping an emergent class consciousness of the proletariat. It provides a language or narrative (which is of course never static) by which the exploited subject can map where she stands politically and in context.

The novelty of the new Lacanian approaches to ideology is also bound up with the way that it imagines organizing and politicization – taking the vanguard of the party as something like the position of the analyst in the psychoanalytic treatment. You see this in the work of someone like Jodi Dean who draws on the communist hypothesis and the party form as a way to connect politics and theoretical practice. I think she’s made the strongest connections between the brand of Žižek inspired ideology critique and activism. For her, and for me too, movements like Occupy Wall Street, are significant for the way that they’ve demonstrated the positive value of organizing in the face of the cleavages opened up by the contradictions of capital. However, it’s the ultimate dispersal of the movement that then recalls the need to theorize.

Going back, then, to Žižek’s critique of post-theory in film studies, I think that this goes to show just how much ideology pervades all aspects of our everyday lives, even in places that we imagine to be wrapped up the most in critique, like the university. Take someone like Chomsky, for instance, who has criticized Žižek for being too abstract in his approach to theory. As much as I admire Chomsky for his political advocacy and (with Edward Herman), his political economy approach to the media, I think that there’s a very interesting line that runs through his work that shows just where theory is lacking. It’s possible to see, for instance, just how much his work in linguistics – the idea of universal grammar, for example – is tied to his anarcho-syndicalist (I’d even go so far as to say Left libertarian) politics. For Chomsky – and we see this in his critique of the media – what’s most important is tearing down limits to freedom and creativity, so that with the media, let’s say, all that is required is for the people to know or become aware of the truth and they will then being to revolt. Unlike Chomsky, what Žižek shows is that more and more people are aware of the truth, but still they continue to act as if this wasn’t the case (or, in Lacanian psychoanalytic terms, “I know very well, but nevertheless…”). For me, this is an indication of where theory is very much needed in political practice. We still need to understand why people do often act against their better interests, and no amount of revelatory indices will do the trick.

What does do the trick, I think, is actually seeing concrete movements, like Black Lives Matter, emerge at moments of capital in crisis; or figures like Bernie Sanders, who are re-popularizing even the term “socialism.” It might not seem like a big deal to some, but it’s the deployment of a signifier like socialism (or communism), even, that I think helps to move people towards solidarity and action – to show that there are alternatives to capitalism. Rhetoric, after all, is still one of the best ways to move people to action; and, a theoretically informed language can get people to move – it is still part of the war of position, which is where I think we are situated at this moment. We are still building towards a critical mass. It is, to use Jameson’s paraphrasing of Gramsci, a moment of cynicism of the intellect, utopianism of the will.