A Brief Comparative Analysis between Zizek and Lacan

Nathan Galvin

Eleanor Binnings – Freshman Comp

Explanatory Synthesis

Comparing Zizek’s first chapter of, “Looking Awry,” with the first section of Jacques Lacan’s lecture, “The Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real”

            How does someone use popular culture to introduce an audience to someone else’s ideas?  Well, Slavoj Zizek has done just that with Jacques Lacan’s ideas.  And, Lacan’s ideas have their roots in Sigmund Freud’s texts and research.  Making the purpose of this paper two-fold: First, it will look to examine Zizek’s notions that are found in the first chapter of, “Looking Awry,” against the backdrop of the first section of Lacan’s lecture, “The Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real”.  Second, by showing through the first prong the relation between Lacan and Zizek, it is important to show that this all stems from Sigmund Freud.  As stated, if the first goal is accomplished, the second one will follow thereafter.

            In Zizek’s, “Looking Awry,” the first chapter, From Reality to the Real, focuses on an explanation of Reality, and an explanation of what is Real.  This calls up the question, how real is reality?  It turns out, by the estimation of this text, that reality isn’t really real.  That everyone imagines or hallucinates their realities, and that the Real is a gray, formless mist.  That is, that it is a mute nothingness, moreover, it exists only in ideology.  How does he do this?  He does this through examples of literature that report the same findings.  Why this isn’t so depressing?  It’s a function that no one can escape.¹ Now, how does this relate to Lacan?

            In Lacan’s lecture, “The Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real,” in the first section, he discusses the Imaginary.  The Imaginary exists as a place for the fulfilment of non-essential satisfactions.  The essential satisfactions being the things necessary to sustain bodily life function, i.e. air to breathe, water to drink, etc.  This place is ultimately derived from desire.  And, the term he uses to describe it, is, ‘libido’.  And, with this structuring our Imaginary realm, through psychoanalysis, the way that is talked about, falls into the same structure as that of language.  What is the structure of language? Language is structured as a symbolic representation.  And that’s where the first section of the lecture ends.²   

Already, in looking at a brief synopsis of each, some comparisons between Lacan’s lecture and Zizek’s first chapter are able to be surfacely drawn.  Where do the deeper connections lie at?  By everyone imagining or hallucinating their realities, as explained by Zizek, it neatly coincides with Lacan’s description of the Imaginary itself.  Which, in turn, as Lacan stated in the introduction to his lecture, Freud’s texts should be adhered to.  Lacan says this, because his motivation for the Imaginary, was drawn from that of Freud’s Superego.  So, the causal chain here was, Freud, then Freud interpreted by Lacan, and then Lacan interpreted by Zizek. 

What else can be drawn from the two?  Zizek talks indirectly about how hard it is to entertain the Real, whereas Lacan hadn’t mentioned it much in the section of lecture addressed by this paper.  This is not a leap by Zizek, nor an oversight by Lacan.  However, it can be said that Lacan doesn’t actually address the Real overmuch in the entirety of his lecture.  Such musings will come to light in later seminars held by Lacan.  As a matter of fact, in the question and answer following the lecture, it is brought up that the Real doesn’t really get talked about, and that when they (the group at the seminar) start to approach it, something else gets in the way.  Lacan responded to the effect that it would need to be addressed in a future lecture.³

So, what can be taken from this?  In a tracing fashion, it was shown how Freud led to Lacan led to Zizek.  Zizek took Lacan’s ideas, and showed how fictional literature was in tune with the Lacanian ideas expressed.  Trying to show the universal connectedness suggested by Lacan’s posturing that the Imaginary is a function that is inescapable, and Zizek is trying to show how expressions through popular culture act as an example of that inescapability.  Although just a glimpse, these ideas are worth diving into.

End Notes

1 1.  Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. MIT, 1991. Print. Pgs 8-16

2 2. Lacan, Jacques, and Bruce Fink. On the Names-of-the-father. Malden, MA: Polity, 2013. Print. pgs 3-15

3 3. Ibid. pgs 49-52