The Operational Logic of Ecocentrism and Its Critical Reflection: A Žižekian Analysis of Ideological Fantasy

This article examines Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ecocentrism through the lens of Lacanian ideology theory, asking how the ecological crisis is symbolically organized in contemporary discourse. Rather than treating ecocentrism as a coherent ecological doctrine, it approaches it as an ideological formation that shapes how environmental breakdown is interpreted, moralized, and acted upon. The article argues that appeals to “nature” often construct it as a normative horizon of balance, limit, or lost order through which crisis becomes intelligible in specific ways. It then traces the conceptual, subjective, and social operations through which ecocentrism acquires force: ecological disruption is narrated through images of harmony and violation, responsibility is individualized through guilt and obligation, and ecological concern is absorbed into green capitalist practices such as ethical consumption and managed environmental responsibility. In this way, ecocentrism can function not only as a language of ecological critique but also as a framework that obscures the historically specific political–economic processes driving environmental destruction. The article does not deny the urgency of the ecological crisis. Rather, it argues for a more materially mediated account of ecological politics, one that is more attentive to capitalist accumulation, infrastructural systems, and unequal social relations in producing socioecological harm.