p.33 No subsequent acquisition or reward can redeem the loss of the privileged object that founds subjectivity; it is a loss without the possibility of recompense.
And yet, ideology proclaims that every loss has a productive dimension to it. In this sense, ideology is singular: all ideologies are but forms of ideology as such. According to Christian ideology, our suffering on earth finds its reward in heavenly bliss. According to capitalist ideology, our labor today has its reward in tomorrow’s riches. According to Islamic fundamentalist logic, our suicidal sacrifice results in an eternity in paradise.
No ideology can avow a completely unproductive loss, a loss that doesn’t lead to the possibility of some future pleasure, and yet an unproductive loss is precisely what defines us.
One challenges ideology not by proclaiming that loss or sacrifice is unnecessary that might live lives of plenitude but by insisting on the unproductivity of loss.
Once a subject grasps that no future gain can redeem the initial loss, ideology loses its ability to control that subject. In this sense, one of the great anti-ideological works of philosophy is Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. 33
When one reaches absolute knowledge, one recognizes that loss is constitutive of whatever position one holds. This recognition allows one to embrace loss for its own sake and to enjoy it rather than retreating from it or trying to overcome it. … Hegel leads philosophy to the position at which it can resist ideology’s effort to recuperate loss and convince subjects that the status of loss is empirical rather than constitutive. 35
Locating the source of one’s suffering in an external threat functions precisely like imagining a future recompense for that suffering. In both cases loss becomes a contingent fact that one might overcome rather than the foundation of one’s subjectivity.
To avow the structural necessity of loss would deprive ideology of its most powerful incentive, which is why no ideology takes up this relation to loss. Or to put it in other terms, what no ideology can acknowledge is the death drive. 35