Critical and Methodological Examination of Slavoj Žižek's Theory of Ideology Critique

As a major contribution to the theory of ideology, Slavoj Žižek's ideology critique has some common backgrounds with discourse theory presented by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe but at the same time, Žižek emphasizes on his theory's radical consequences which are quite different from radical democracy because he believes that discourse theory has ignored the problematic of ideology. This article seeks to explain the differences between discourse theory and ideology critique in order to emphasize on the capabilities of the latter. Therefore after a brief review of the evolution of ideology, the author depicts the Lacanian concepts of Žižek's ideology critique. At the last part of the article, the critical semiology is added in order to provide a supplementary methodological instrument to this theory which is vague in terms of methodology.