A good starting point for such an approach is Slavoj Žižek’s brilliant reconceptualization of ideology as a matter of action rather than knowledge. For Žižek, the sign of an effective ideology is not “false consciousness” in the classic Marxian sense but rather the expression of belief through actions. Žižek’s basic “formula” for ideological disavowal is “I know very well… but just the same…” Under the spell of this formula, we may “know very well” that something is wrong, but “just the same” we continue to act as if all is well. Fantasy is the mechanism that smoothes the contradiction between knowledge and action. Within a powerful enough fantasy, simply knowing that something is wrong is not enough to change behavior. Indeed, the cynicism that was once the hallmark of enlightened ideology critique is for Žižek the very essence of contemporary ideology, for cynicism (“I know very well what is wrong, but there is nothing I can do”) results in the same inaction as classical ideological delusion (“nothing is wrong, all is well”).
In the covert sphere, however, the question of public knowledge is complicated by the tension between state secrecy and its popular representation. On the one hand, the public “knows very well” that the state has adopted methods at odds with its public commitment to democracy and human rights. The reason U.S. citizens did not protest domestic NSA “data mining” in 2005, notes a character in William Gibson’s Spook Country, is that “they’d already been taking it for granted, since at least the 1960s, that the CIA was tapping everybody’s phone. It was the stuff of bad episodic television. It was something little kids knew to be true.” On the other hand, the public does not know the details of most covert actions, particularly as they unfold. Knowing, for instance, that enemy combatants are being interrogated in military prisons is not the same as knowing how they are being interrogated or why. This gap explains the public shock when news outlets began to report the abuse and torture of enemy prisoners several years into President Bush’s War on Terror. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the public knew nothing of U.S. policy, for it had long enjoyed popular fictions (The Siege, 24, Patriot Games, The Sum of All Fears, The Unit, the Bourne trilogy, and many others) that depicted the grim horrors and miraculous efficacy of covert action, extraordinary rendition, and brutal interrogation […]. These entertainments suggested the state’s covert methods, but the knowledge came in the form of melodrama and narrative fantasy. In an era of covert action, such fantasies are crucial vehicles of public half-knowledge.
The epistemology of the covert sphere can thus be further specified in two modifications of Žižek’s general formula, I know very well… but just the same. The first of these is I can’t know, and I don’t want to know. The second is I believed I knew, but I am shocked to discover…! The contradiction between these two positions reflects the gap between juridical-historical and “fictional” sources of knowledge about the covert sector. The first statement converts the state’s prohibition on knowledge into a desire not to know. This stance represents an inversion of Althusser’s classic example of ideological interpellation; instead of the subject answering when the state says, “Hey, you!” the subjects of the covert sphere close their eyes when the state says, “Don’t look!” The state’s position here is epitomized by Nathan R. Jessup, the haughty colonel (played by Jack Nicholson) in A Few Good Men: “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!” This is the original “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the Cold War state. It captures not only the state’s prohibition of public knowledge but also the public’s desire to disavow its knowledge of undemocratic state means. It transforms cynicism (I know but cannot act) into mystified submission (I cannot and should not know).
– The Covert Sphere (2012), pp. 24-5