# Quote — Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology

> In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

- Author: [Slavoj Žižek](https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek.md)
- Book: [The Sublime Object of Ideology](https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#The_Sublime_Object_of_Ideology_(1989)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology/in-the-more

## More from this book

> 'Father, why is the sky blue?' - the child is not really interested in the sky as such; the real stake of the question is to expose father's impotence, his helplessness in the face of the hard fact, to present the whole chain of reasons leading to it. The blue of the sky thus becomes not only the father's problem, but in a way even his fault. The sky is blue, and you're just staring at it like an idiot incapable of doing anything about it!

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology/father-why-is-the.md)

> Memento mori should be read: don't forget to die.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology/memento-mori-should.md)

> Subject - (1) a person subject to political rule; (2) a free agent, instigator of its activity - subjects can realize themselves as free agents only by means of redoubling themselves as, only in so far as they project, transpose the pure form of their freedom into the very heart of the substance opposed to them; into the person of the subject-monarch as head of state.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology/subject-1-a-person.md)