# Quote — Slavoj Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology

> Symptoms are meaningless traces, their meaning is not discovered, excavated from the hidden depth of the past, but constructed retroactively - the analysis produces the truth; that is, the signifying frame which gives their symptoms their symbolic place and meaning. As soon as we enter the symbolic order, the past is always present in the form of historical tradition and the meaning of these traces is not given; it changes continually with the transformations of the signifier's network. Every historical rupture, every advent of a new master-signifier, changers retroactively the meaning of all tradition, restructures the narration of the past, and makes it readable in another, new way.

- 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/symptoms-are-meaningless

## 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)