Money Wisdom #418

"Zizek often uses the terms 'imaginary', 'fantasy', and 'ideology' interchangeably. The function of the imaginary should not, however, be confused with the popular notion of ideology as a veil covering up the true state of reality. On the contrary, if we keep in mind the distinction between the real and reality, ideology is art of the very fabric of reality. In a key formulation, Zizek puts it this way:

Ideology is not a dreamlike illusion that we build to escape insupportable reality; in its basic dimension it is a fantasy-construction which serves as a support for our 'reality' itself: an illusion which structures our effective, real social relations and thereby masks some insupportable, real, impossible kernel... the function of ideology is not to offer us some point of escape from our reality but to offer us the social reality itself as an escape from some traumatic real kernel. (Zizek The Sublime Object of Ideology p.45)

The imaginary may indeed serve to cover up an underlying traumatic split, but the cover-up is an inherent part of the very functioning of reality. The imaginary is not a derivative form of ontological order, the neutralization of which would result in a state of truth. The truth does not reside somewhere behind or beyond the order of the imaginary, but in the very imaginary interweaving of the real and the fantasy of the market."

Ole Bjerg Making Money (2104) p.32