Ideological Anamorphosis
The procedure which enables us to discern the structural inconsistency of an ideological edifice is that of the anamorphic reading. For example, is not the relationship between le Nom-du-Pere and le Non-du-Pere in Lacan a kind of theoretical anamorphosis? The shift from Nom to Non--that is, the insight which makes us discern, in the positive figure of Father as bearer of symbolic authority, merely the materialized/embodied negation--effectively involves a change in the subject's perspective: viewed from the right perspective, the Father's majestic presence becomes visible as a mere positivization of a negative gesture. One can also put it in Kantian terms: the anamorphic shift enables us to discern an apparently positive object as a 'negative magnitude', as a mere 'positivization of a void'. That is the elementary procedure of the critique of ideology; the 'sublime object of ideology' is the spectral object which has no positive ontological consistency, but merely fills in the gap of a certain constitutive impossibility.
The anti-Semitic figure of the Jew (to take the example of this sublime object) bears witness to the fact that the ideological desire which sustains ant-Semitism is inconsistent, 'self-contradictory' (capitalist competition and pre-modern organic solidarity, etc.). In order to maintain this desire, a specific object must be invented which gives body to, externalizes, the cause of the non-satisfaction of this desire (the Jew who is responsible for social disintegration). The lack of positive ontological consistency in this figure of the Jew is proved by the fact that the true relationship of causality is inverted with regard to the way things appear within the anti-Semitic ideological space: it is not the Jew who prevents Society from existing (from realizing itself as a full organic solidarity, etc.); rather, it is social antagonism which is primordial, and the figure of the Jew comes second as a fetish which materializes this hindrance. In this sense, one can also say that the Jew (not actual Jews, but the 'conceptual Jew' in anti-Semitism) is a Kantian 'negative magnitude': the positivization of the opposing force of 'evil' whose activity explains why the order of Good can never fully win. One of the most elementary definitions of ideology, therefore, is: a symbolic field which contains such a filler holding the place of some structural impossibility. In natural sciences, an example of such 'negative magnitude' is the infamous phlogiston (the ethereal stuff which allegedly serves as the medium for the transmission of light): this object merely positivizes the lack and inconsistency of our scientific explanation of the true nature of light. In all these cases, the basic operation is that of giving negativity precedence over positivity: prohibition is not a secondary obstacle which hinders my desire; desire itself is an attempt to fill the gap sustained by the prohibition. The (anti-Semitic figure of the) 'Jew' is not the positive cause of social imbalance and antagonisms: social antagonism comes first, and the 'Jew' merely gives body to this obstacle.
Kant is usually criticized for his formalism: for maintaining the rigid distinction between the network of formal conditions and the contingent positive content which provides the content for this formal network. There is, however, a critico-ideological use of this distinction: in the case of anti-Semitism, the main point is that the historical reality of Jews is exploited to fill in a pre-constructed ideological space which is in no way inherently connected with the historical reality of Jews. One falls into the ideological trap precisely by succumbing to the illusion that anti-Semitism really is about Jews.
Does not Lacan perform the same anamorphic shift of perspective in his famous reversal of Dostoevsky ('If there is no God, nothing at all is permitted')--that is to say, in his reversal of (the common perception of) Law as the agency which represses desire into (the concept of) Law as that which effectively sustains desire? In this precise sense, the Hegelian dialectical reversal also always involves a kind of anamorphic shift of perspective: what we (mis)perceived as the obstacle (the Prohibition), the condition of impossibility, is actually a positive condition of possibility (of our desiring)--the wicked world about which the Beautiful Soul complains is the inherent condition of its own subjective position. (The same also goes for the relationship between Law and its transgression: far from undermining the rule of the Law, its 'transgression' in fact serves as its ultimate support. So it is not only that transgression relies on, presupposes, the Law it transgresses; rather, the reverse case is much more pertinent. Law itself relies on its inherent transgression, so that when we suspend this transgression, the Law itself disintegrates.)
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