| Sumario: | This essay aims to critically outline a Žižekian theory of subjectivity; including explanations of concepts that are necessary for understanding the Žižekian subject, such as Phantasy, the big Other, disavowal etc. The minimal condition of the Žižekian subject is constituted by the following: The subject is a hole/lack in material reality1. This hole/lack is freedom. The subject has a 'death drive', which constructs a Phantasy world the subject can live which keeps it desiring. In this phantasy, made up of symbols (objects), the subject misrecognises himself as object. I will first outline the no-thingness of the subject through an elucidation of the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic. I will then posit the death drive, before justifying it by reference to existentialism, showing that the subject's no-thingness and freedom are equivalent. The second part of the essay will be devoted to how exactly the subject constructs the Phantasy of identity in which it lives, using Lacanian Psychoanalysis. The subject's Phantasy is the social identity it constructs in order to sees itself as other than a free subject. I will lastly discuss Macintyre's epistemic objection to such worldviews that posit universal ignorance of some posited phenomenon - in this case the nothingness/freedom of the subject. Introducing the concept of disavowal in response to Macintyre's criticism completes the minimal picture of the Žižekian subject.2
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