Zizek's Fetishism Theory In The View Of Historical Materialism

In modern society based on capital,fetishism has become the most pervasive reality in our time.The critique of fetishism has thus become the most important ideological task of our time.Slavoj (?)i(?)ek,the most vivid and radical thinker,has integrated the academic tradition of psychoanalysis into the criticism of fetishism to propose some profound philosophical categories and propositions including Psychoanalysis and Marxism in the most vivid historical phenomenon of the current capitalist society with his full theoretical literacy and genius-like critical wisdom,and becomes an inescapable theoretical figure in the history of Marxist thought and the critical history of ideology.This not only means that the study of the critical theory of ideology of (?)i(?)ek's fetishism has theoretical necessity,but also means that it is possible to examine (?)i(?)ek's fetishism criticism in the perspective of historical materialism,because fetishism criticize,an ideological history,has become the common theoretical object of Marx and (?)i(?)ek's ideological critique,and occupies the core position of this critique.Fetishism as a philosophical term is intertwined with various discourses of social and intellectual history.The most important revelation from the investigation of this history is to find that regarding fetishism as a theoretical critique has realized the transformation of the investigation from anthropological to philosophical or sociological horizons.And Marx undoubtedly became the first man to realize it.Marx's critical theory of fetishism has experienced the first face of the early“dissimilation labor” as the core category and the “social relationship” critical process with the initial framework of historical materialism.Later,it formed and developed in the “three great fetishism” on the basis of his deep analysis of the social economic reality of capitalism and the criticism of bourgeois economics.This shows that Marx's critical theory of fetishism has its inner philosophical discourse transformation and the evolution of ideological logic,and is universally oriented with the formation and development of historical materialism.It inherently contains theoretical care and spiritual essence for historical materialism.In the dimension of ideological critique,the critique of fetishism constitutes Marx's deepening of the ideological critique in the capitalist economic society,and thus constitutes a profound development of his highly ideology critical theory.Cutting a point with Marx's “commodity fetishism”,(?)i(?)ek has interpreted fetishism as a “self-serving ideology”,which is different from the traditional“complex as concepts” and “as material-ritual” as a social reality.This not only explains the internal turn of Marx's theory of ideology,but also answers the ideology of the contemporary “final conclusion of ideology”.Through the analysis of fetishism as a “self-contained ideology”,(?)i(?)ek challenged the traditional understanding of the connection between ideology and epistemology.Ideology is not only a kind of social consciousness,but also a kind of social existence.This kind of social existence,as the illusion structure of ideology,is the social reality in the sense of Lacan.Thus,(?)i(?)ek transformed the mode of action of ideology from the level of “knowing” to the field of “doing”.Further,using the tools of Lacan's psychoanalysis,(?)i(?)ek regarded fetishism as the “ideological illusion” of capitalist society.Illusion is not a false reflection of reality,but an indispensable support for reality.There is no illusion to support reality,and "ideological illusion constructs reality".Here,(?)i(?)ek applies Lacan's meaning of "reality","illusion" and "unconscious" to the field of ideology to illustrate how social reality is the object of ideological illusion construction.It is through the analysis of the objects constructed by this illusion that (?)i(?)ek examines that ideology maintains the rule of the current capitalist social ideology by mechanisms such as stitching,identity,belief and mental image to manipulate people's desires.Since ideology is no longer just a cognitive issue,but more of an illusion-structured society,then ideological criticism is no longer just a critique of false consciousness.It is important to discuss the operating mechanism of ideology in social reality.For (?)i(?)ek,the main task of this criticism is to “traverse” the fetishism as an ideological illusion.By revealing the paradoxical nature of the most basic ideology in today's world,that is,the “knowing it,but still being calm”,which is the most basic ideology in today's world,(?)i(?)ek explains the most basic operating mechanism of the construction of social reality by ideological illusion.The starting point of criticizing the ideological illusion lays in the “collapse point” of the reality,that is,a gap in the social structural lesion,which is the “symptom” of the society.(?)i(?)ek examined the possibility of commodity fetishism as the collapse point of modern capital logic with the help of “symptom”,a conceptual tool of Lacan's psychoanalysis,to examine the possibility of commodity fetishism as the collapse point of modern capital logic.On this basis,(?)i(?)ek proposed a key step through the ideological illusion,that is,identity syndrome.In his recognition of the symptoms,he inherited Lacan's psychoanalysis and explained the core concept of the ideological illusion of “surplus pleasure” from Marx's concept of “surplus value”.As a microcosmic and marginal existence scattered in the daily life and communication of the society,the surplus pleasure takes place all the mysteries of the ideological system.By grafting psychoanalysis with Marxism to make Marx encounter Lacan,(?)i(?)ek elucidates the characteristic theoretical atlas from the criticism of fetishism.Form a kind of supplement and development to Marx's historical materialism in the history of thought.In the core theoretical dimension of ideology,(?)i(?)ek not only transformed Marxist ideological criticism from the objective perspective of commodity structure to the subjective perspective of individual infatuation.Moreover,in the way of criticism,the elements of psychoanalysis are introduced to historical materialism.At the same time,(?)i(?)ek criticism of fetishism in the framework of psychoanalysis extended Marx's principle of internal negativity of capital,and then answered and reflected on Marx's communist ideal.It can also be seen that (?)i(?)ek's theory of fetishism relates to the criticism of the living conditions of contemporary capitalist society,which is not pure cultural criticism or ethical criticism,and he pursues a “real action”.This shows that it inherits Marxist political practice character and radical stand against capitalist social plan.However,when (?)i(?)ek used the psychoanalytic method to fuse Marxism,he did not really fully handle the ideological gap between the two,and therefore placed Lacan above Marx and made Marx Lacanization.As a result,(?)i(?)ek gradually deviated from the critical direction of Marx's historical materialism and fell into his own theoretical dilemma.From the theoretical coordinates of historical materialism to examine this theoretical attempt of (?)i(?)ek,his critical theory of fetishism mainly has the following three aspects of theoretical imbalance:(1)replacing “surplus value”with “surplus pleasure”.Starting from Lacan's pleasure ontology,he putted desire at the core of the social movement and tried to substitute Marx's political economics for criticizing the production of surplus value with the psychoanalysis of criticizing the production of surplus pleasure.This not only means abstracting the subject of ideology,but also simplifying the driving force of capitalist self-movement;(2)as a result of (?)i(?)ek's interpretation of ideological subjects in the framework of psychoanalysis and his abstract understanding of dialectics,he did not provide a realistic way out of the ideological dilemma for people in the end.The efforts to cross the ideological illusion has eventually fallen into ideology itself;(3)because of the excessively strong psychoanalytic plot in (?)i(?)ek's theory,the critical plan of capitalism produced in his critical theory of fetishism lacks the realistic dimension of social history.This made the “real action” he pursued to recede into an empty concept,and his utopian denunciation of Marx's ideal of communist society has actually become a kind of utopia.