Abstract

In this paper I explore Žižek’s stance on ideology. I begin with an overview, move to his understanding of the ‘act’ and then move into the second part of the paper which is a discussion of the first part in relation to his encounter with Deleuze in Organs Without Body. I claim that this was a missed encounter, or rather it will always remain an impossible encounter given that Lacan, Badiou and Žižek’s philosophical embrace of negativity bumps up squarely against Deleuze and Guattari’s affirmative stance. This deadlock does not offer a ‘solution’ as much as the political consequences that emerge from the two paths taken. It is further claimed that these crossroads are separated by two very different understandings of infinity as they are developed in the Kantian antinomy of the mathematical and dynamic sublime