domingo, 6 de maio de 2007

Ideology - quoting Zizek

From the book "The Sublime Object of Ideology", London, Verso, 1999 (8th imp.), pp. 32-33:

"(...) we established a new way to read the Marxian formula "they do not know, but they are doing it": the illusion is not on the side of knowledge, it is already on the side of reality itself; of what people are doing. What they do not know is that their social reality itself, their activity, is guided by an illusion, by a fetishistic inversion. What they overlook, what they misrecognize, is not the reality but the illusion which is structuring their reality, their real social activity. They know very well how things really are, but still they are doing it as if they did not know. The illusion is therefore double: it consists in overlooking the illusion which is structuring our real, effective relationship to reality. And this overloaded, unconscious illusion is what may be called the ideological fantasy."

What is important in Zizek is that he explains ideology, the way we look at the world, the inner core of our beliefs, the frame of our action and the meaning that we give to it, through the concept of fantasy, which is of Lacanian inspiration. In order to understand our unconditional submission to a certain Order and Authority we need to go deep into the "unconscious economy of the subject.":

Ib, p. 45: "The function of ideology is not to offer us a point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic, real kernel."

I can not develop this here. For an archaeologist who studies pre-State, oral societies, it is crucial to understand the way "belief" acts in the constitution of socialities, in the very possibility of common action. In that sense, to understand how the imaginary and the symbolic operates is absolutely fundamental to understand power, law, the "social tie" - far beyond capitalist or "pre-capitalist" societies that marxists and other social scientists have been trying to understand in the last two centuries.
Our tragedy as archaeologists is that we start by the absolutely abstract: material things. There is nothing more abstract then a material thing. And then we say it is mute, it does not speak, as if we expected that the reality where we live was there for us, in a state of expectation of our questions. We must overcome this infantile fantasy.

2 comentários:

Gonçalo Leite Velho disse...

O problema essencial da questão da materialidade está nessa distinção que fazemos entre o pronto-à-mão e o presente-à-mão (Heidegger como sempre).
O Julian Thomas desenvolve um pouco a ideia no artigo da sessão "Overcoming the modern invention of Material Culture" (essencial este artigo).
A ideia de um imaginário colectivo supra-humano parece grassar numa certa psiquiatria. Como se existisse uma teia simbólica que se sobrepusesse à Humanidade, desenvolvida em papéis como Pai, Mãe, filho, filha, e em processos como castração, ejaculação, frustração. É bom para quem quer conhecer o presente. É mau para quem quer compreender a temporalidade.
A proposta lacaniana em arqueologia pode ligar-se com o desenvolvimento de uma certa semiologia (Symbols in Action). Podemos ficar tentados a operar com estas categoria, estabelecendo uma moldura de análise em que tudo são metáforas. Logo à partida surge uma imagem: Um "pré-histórico" senta-se no divã com Zizek e Lacan de cada lado.

Vitor Oliveira Jorge disse...

Peço desculpa ao meu companheiro de blog e amigo, mas esta mensagem para mim não faz grande sentido.
Estou a trabalhar na 12ª mesa-redonda de Primavera.