Abstract

This discussion delineates and explores Žižek’s ideology-critique towards the end of conceptually distinguishing the deployment of techne as the other side of impossibility, as revealed by his dialectical materialism. Techne appears herein as the other side of impossibility as the credentials of Žižek's style of critique rest on there being an ideal point in constellations of value and social ties in the aesthetics of the life-world that encourage the crafting of the identity of the human subject and, at the same moment, hide the full realisation of this identity from the subject, making it impossible for s/he to develop the identification of their subjectivity beyond merely a token gesture of what they can ‘become.’ This discussion thus attempts to locate and articulate this moment of impossibility in its various modalities and elucidate techne on these grounds, revealing Žižek’s critique as one of Geist in the sense Adorno gave to the term