The New Critique of Ideology : Lessons from Post-Pinochet Chile

This book offers an original and comprehensive formulation of a new ideology critique for political analysis. Going beyond the reiterative attempts of declaring the ''death of ideology'', the book - after revisiting the main developments of the theory of ideology - presents a productive critique of Habermas''s theory of communicative action viewed through Slavoj Žižek''s theory of ideology. Far from assuming their theories are incommensurable, the book argues that it is worth observing Žižek''s theoretical endeavor as a ''supplementary'' overcoming of Habermas''s proposal. This will eventually show that by using a fictional notion of the Real taken from a Žižekian reading of Lacan, a new ideology critique, which affirms a universal truth for a political situation, becomes possible. This new model of ideology critique is applied to the political consensus reached in Chile''s post-Pinochet.