Rumsfeld's known/unknown matrix and the fourth term
example · political/historical ·
retold in 15 talks
Rumsfeld articulated three epistemological categories before the Iraq war (known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns); Žižek argues he missed the crucial fourth, 'unknown knowns' (unconscious fantasies), which is what the U.S. lacked awareness of, making the Iraqi Minister of Information's quip ('Americans don't control even themselves') accidentally true.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 14
“things we don't know that we know them... This is what in psychoanalysis of course is called unconscious”
“Rumsfeld forgot the fourth term... unknown knowns. You don't know what you know. This is called in psychoanalysis unconscious.”
“There is a fourth term missing: unknown knowns. Things we do not know that we know. This is what we call ideology.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Donald Rumsfeld14Père Joseph (François Leclerc du Tremblay)4Aldous Huxley5Brian Victoria5Lavrentiy Beria3Julius Rosenberg2Paul Robeson2Ágota Kristóf2
alongside works
Every retelling 14
Rumsfeld articulated three epistemological categories before the Iraq war (known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns); Žižek argues he missed the crucial fourth, 'unknown knowns' (unconscious fantasies), which is what the U.S. lacked awareness of, making the Iraqi Minister of Information's quip ('Americans don't control even themselves') accidentally true., illustrating unknown knowns,the unconscious,ideology,American politics
Žižek cites Rumsfeld's March 2003 press conference distinguishing known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns (used to justify the Iraq invasion), then adds the fourth forgotten term: unknown knowns, what we do not know we already know, the Freudian unconscious, and applies this matrix to our disavowal of ecological crisis., illustrating unknown knowns,ideology,ecology as ideology,unconscious
Rumsfeld distinguished known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns; Žižek adds the missing fourth term, 'unknown knowns,' things we do not know that we know, which he identifies as ideology itself., illustrating unknown knowns,ideology,fetishist disavowal
Rumsfeld named known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns before the Iraq war, but stopped short of the fourth category, the 'unknown knowns': things we don't know we know (the unconscious), which Žižek calls the crucial level missing from American politics., illustrating unknown knowns,the unconscious
Rumsfeld's 2003 amateur philosophizing listed known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns but forgot the fourth term, the unknown knowns, the disavowed beliefs we don't know we know, which is precisely the Freudian unconscious., illustrating the unknown knowns,the unconscious (unknown knowns)
Žižek extends Rumsfeld's press-conference taxonomy (known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns) to reveal the missing fourth term: unknown knowns, the ideological fantasies that regulated US behavior in Iraq., illustrating unknown knowns,ideology and fantasy