The Split Subject

From Slavoj Žižek: Interrogating the Real, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London: Continuum, 2005, 2006), p. 373-4:

For Žižek, the subject is first of all a critical position from which to analyze ideology: it stands for that empty point which precedes ideology and from which ideology is articulated. In this sense, the subject is to be opposed to subjectivization, which is precisely that process of the internalizing and the making natural of ideology: 'As soon as we constitute ourselves as ideological subjects, as soon as we respond to the interpellation and assume a certain subject-position ... we are overlooking the radical dimension of social antagonism, that is to say, the traumatic kernel the symbolization of which always fails; and ... it is precisely the Lacanian notion of the subject as the "empty place of the structure" which describes the subject in its confrontation with antagonism, the subject which isn't covering up the traumatic dimension of social antagonism' (p. 251). To this extent, the subject can be thought as a certain excess of ideological interpellation, that which in a way remains 'beyond interpellation': 'that which defines the subject, let us not forget, is precisely the question' (p. 39). The experience of subjectivity is thus an experience of pure negativity, in which every aspect of identity must be lost or sacrificed: '[In] "tarrying with the negative," ... Hegel's whole point is that the subject does not survive the ordeal of negativity: he effectively loses his very essence and passes over into his Other' (p. 200). The correlative of the subject within the symbolic order can therefore be thought of as objet a, that which stands in for the Real: 'the matheme for the subject is $, an empty place in the structure, an elided signifier, while objet a is by definition an excessive object, an object that lacks its place in the structure' (p. 178). This equivalence must nevertheless be clarified: 'The parallel between the void of the transcendental subject ($) and the void of the transcendental object--the inaccessible X that causes our perceptions--is misleading here: the transcendental object is the void beyond phenomenal appearances, while the transcendental subject already appears as a void' (p. 215).