Negativity, as a concept, was the most difficult part of this work to understand for me. Working through formulations of negativity requires you conceive of it logically (as in formal logic’s A and ~A), which sounds obvious but these formulations can become quite complicated: negativity, absolute negativity, self-negation, self-referential negation, etc. However, negativity is at the root of this book. The thesis culminated by the end is that ideology provides a microcosmic image of the subject writ large, in which the world of symbols and fantasy is one created within the subject.

A subjective world of meaning obviously envelops the material world around it, and Zizek does not argue for a solipsistic theory in which there is no material reality outside the head of the subject. Quite the opposite, the world is radically material, and any sense of necessary phenomena (meaning socio-historical events that necessarily precipitate future events) is engendered by the subject after the fact, interpreting that which is contingent or already given (i.e. material reality). However, there is a reality created by the subject to inscribe itself into the material world, which is where Zizek synthesizes Marx, Hegel, & Lacan.Desire is at the heart of subjectivity, but it is ultimately always empty. Desire is something in the face of which the subject defines itself, and drive is what perennially propels the subject to seek the end of their desire. Zizek argues that the object of one’s desire will always have a shape, but is ultimately nothing. Likewise, Lacan’s Big Other - the Other who the subject encounters in other people - is ultimately nothing. The reality of sharing the planet with others is a given. We are all here, on this planet, with nature. How we internally reconcile our being here, how we define ourselves vis-a-vis other people & things, is predicated on a presupposition of an order (a symbolic order).To ‘unmask the illusion’ does not mean that ‘there is nothing to see behind it’: what we must be able to see is precisely this nothing as such - beyond the phenomena, there is nothing but this nothing itself, ‘nothing’ which is the subject. To conceive the appearance as ‘mere appearance’ the subject effectively has to go beyond it, to ‘pass over’ it, but what he finds there is his own act of passage (254).“Nothing which is the subject” feels inherently paradoxical. I exist, so how can I be nothing? This paradox is precisely the nature of subjectivity. That symbolic order is entirely composed and perpetuated in the subject, but it does not exist outside it. What we see is merely a reflection of ourselves in the world, one we impose on everything around us, but that reflection is an inverse negativity, it is a negativity which we perceive positively, as something really existing.This symbolic externality we impose on the world (the value of objects, historical significance & necessity, power) is entirely internal. A monarch has no inherent power though we, sincerely or ironically, imbue them with power all the same. Money has no inherent value though we, sincerely or ironically, imbue it with value all the same. This order must sustain itself or it ceases to exist. The counterargument would then obviously be: “If this is just a philosophy of ‘the Emperor has no clothes,’ then why wouldn’t society simply crumble upon the utterance that money is inherently valueless, something most people already know.” Zizek argues that ideology is not something to be “unmasked” (or an emperor to be derobed), where we draw the curtain to reveal there was no Wizard of Oz but a man with a microphone. Rather, the nothing that lies beyond the signifier cannot be symbolized as not-power or not-value, it is simply “nothing as such,” a radical negativity that we as subjects cannot integrate into an order, hence its sublimity. As Zizek argues: “The Sublime is therefore the paradox of an object which, in the very field of representation, provides a view, in a negative way, of the dimension of what is unrepresentable” (263).When we derobe the emperor, we are not suddenly satisfied in having discovered the Real. Instead, the Real is precisely the “fissure” between Emperor and Nothing, a kernel of traumatic truth that cannot be symbolized. We can only recognize it as a desire to derobe the emperor in search of something else. We are constantly seeking some Thing, an object of our desire, to sustain the order of reality. “Fantasy is basically a scenario filling out the empty space of a fundamental impossibility, a screen masking a void” (173). To truly go beyond ideology and fantasy would be to rid reality of all “value” and “meaning,” what Hegel calls “absolute understanding.”Again, if this is the case, then why don’t we all aspire toward this obviously transcendent state of absolute understanding? Why wouldn’t we be driven to discard our material possessions, our meaningless shibboleths, our systems of arbitrary power? This is where Zizek leans on Lacan and the nature of enjoyment. We enjoy the illusion too much to do away with it. This is not in the way we use rats to prove we’ll avoid levers that electrocute us and seek levers that give us cheese, effectively what Freud called the “pleasure principle.” Zizek again leans on Lacan and the idea of going “beyond the pleasure principle.” Our desire is so immanent that we relentlessly pursue it and all its enjoyable pit stops, even if we hurt or betray ourselves in the pursuit. It’s the enjoyment through pain (what Lacan calls jouissance) that separates Desire from craving (e.g. wanting a Twinkie is not Desire as Zizek means it). Desire is perhaps the want for happiness one believes will be satiated by a Twinkie, only to be brutally reminded upon finishing it how insufficient it was. Yet what do we want right after a Twinkie? Maybe another Twinkie because if we can just capture that feeling forever, we’ll be truly satisfied. Or maybe something salty for the same reason. Or maybe we recognize the Twinkie is bad for us and think if we just exercised some more and ate better, we would finally attain that satisfaction in life. All of these are impossibilities. Desire’s synonym, “want,” is perhaps as apt a term because of its synonymy with “lack.” We want something because we want for something. Desire is precisely this lack, one with nothing at its core.Ideology is what the subject depends upon to sustain this fantasy, this jouissance, this enjoyment. To transcend it would mean self-destruction. There would be no subjectivity as we know it without ideology and the symbolic order. The sublime object is therefore that which confronts the subject with its own negativity, with its own existence as contradiction, nothingness, and paradox. It is an object which the subject cannot symbolize and therefore cannot integrate into itself. The common misconception of the Hegelian dialectic would say this friction within the subject would produce some new synthesis, reconciling the thesis & antithesis to result in absolute knowledge. However, this friction is precisely what sustains us. The constant definition vis-a-vis some other. The subject is defined by the fact the dialectic has no end, that it is always changing, never fixed. We are defined by our constantly becoming.