Žižek’s understanding of political belief is modelled on Lacan’s understanding of transference in psychoanalysis. The belief or “supposition” of the analysand in psychoanalysis is that the Other (his analyst) knows the meaning of his symptoms.
This is obviously a false belief, at the start of the analytic process. But it is only through holding this false belief about the analyst that the work of analysis can proceed, and the transferential belief can become true (when the analyst does become able to interpret the symptoms).
Žižek argues that this strange intersubjective or dialectical logic of belief in clinical psychoanalysis also what characterizes peoples’ political beliefs.
Belief is always “belief through the Other,” Žižek argues. If subjects do not know the exact meaning of those “master signifiers” with which they political identify, this is because their political belief is mediated through their identifications with others.
Although they each themselves “do not know what they do” (which is the title one of Žižek’s books [Žižek, 2002]), the deepest level of their belief is maintained through the belief that nevertheless there are Others who do know.
This is obviously a false belief, at the start of the analytic process. But it is only through holding this false belief about the analyst that the work of analysis can proceed, and the transferential belief can become true (when the analyst does become able to interpret the symptoms).
Žižek argues that this strange intersubjective or dialectical logic of belief in clinical psychoanalysis also what characterizes peoples’ political beliefs.
Belief is always “belief through the Other,” Žižek argues. If subjects do not know the exact meaning of those “master signifiers” with which they political identify, this is because their political belief is mediated through their identifications with others.
Although they each themselves “do not know what they do” (which is the title one of Žižek’s books [Žižek, 2002]), the deepest level of their belief is maintained through the belief that nevertheless there are Others who do know.
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