Theory Video: Zizek on Ideology, Populism, and Multiculturalism (Patreon)

In Marxist theory today few questions take on as much importance as the question of ideology. Marx brilliantly laid out a framework for the concept of ideology in the German Ideology: "Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process." So the inversion of our world is caused by the "historical life-process" of our society and our time. 

In this video excerpted from a lecture, Zizek lays out some contemporary examples of how ideology functions in our time. His conception has significant consequences for how we engage in politics and for the future that we claim we want. When thinking about ideology and politics it is important to remember that ideology is strongest at the moment we believe we are post-ideological, a claim often made by technocrats and neoliberals.