Disrupting Capitalism
There is no symbolic space outside of global capital; an alternative to capital is impossible. Paradoxically, herein lays the precise possibility for moving beyond capital. From within the current hegemonic boundaries of capitalism, there is simply no prospect of an end to capitalism - those who practice ‘Third-Way’ politics are correct, there is no alternative. Capitalism has an all-pervasive grip upon the power centres of the world. The jouissance produced through the abstract universal imaginaries of capital and the various modalities of ideological fantasy that provide its unconscious supplement are too compelling. Although most of the capitalist world is aware of the potential threats to capital, particularly climate change and global poverty, these symptoms are easily disavowed; such is the effectiveness of capital in domesticating the threat posed by its symptoms. Nonetheless, through dialectical logic, specifically the dialectical materialist methodology suggested in this thesis, the potential strategies for disturbing the impossible grip of capitalism become apparent. The greatest potential lies in the very impossibility of moving beyond capitalism.
This impossibility is best understood through Žižek’s notion of the parallax view. It highlights the disruptive potential(s) of the concrete universal and of the Real within the totality that is capitalism. Again, no ‘beyond’ exits to capitalism, only the possibility of rupture within.
The potential for, and apparent impossibility of, moving beyond global capital is illustrated in the relationship that exists between the two areas of discourse that have been analysed in the previous two chapters, Green ideology and discourses on global poverty (developmentalism). These two areas represent the major areas of discursive investment for the political Left. They are, however, incommensurable forms of engagement with global capitalism; they form a political parallax centred around a social antagonism that is caused by global capital. It appears that the Left can either speak of environmentalism, of reducing pollution and carbon production, or global development– increasing the collective wealth of humanity – but not both positions at the same time. Those who focus on the goal of reducing poverty argue for increased levels of consumption and greater production. On the other side of the parallax, environmentalists and ecologists demand that limits be placed upon development. Such a limit radically interferes with the goal of eliminating poverty. The gap between these elements is sutured under the empty signifier ‘Left’, which supports the Kantian transcendental illusion that something exists between the two perspectives. However, as Kant’s notion of the illusion makes clear, no such position exists, only the presence of absence. This gap – the parallax Real – occurs because of a fundamental antagonism that exists between the two, caused by global capital in its manifestation as the symbolic Real. Only with the dissipation of capitalism can this parallax be dissolved, not with the suturing of the gap between the two (which is the current strategy for much of the political Left). In contrast, rather than attempting to provide a suturing-point for this impossibility, this thesis argues that the more productive political approach is instead to focus on the impossibility that is inherent to this parallax and also on the parallax of ontological difference that sits between the abstract and concrete universals of global capitalism. This position can be achieved by attempting to think both perspectives – and the gap – at once, through the dialectical concept of totality. In doing so, a psychoanalytic approach is not only able to reveal the contingency of capitalist social constructions of the abstract universal (of the social Good), but more importantly the capitalism’s disavowed materialist core , its concrete universal.
The methodology created in this thesis grounds Žižek’s abstract philosophical position. As its application to the two areas of discourse demonstrates, possibilities exist for disrupting the existing hegemonic matrix of global capital by evoking capitalism’s concrete universal, by ‘practicing’ the concrete universal as Žižek puts it.
Practicing Concrete Universality
A first possible means for practicing concrete universality comes by focusing on what I term ‘discourses of the concrete universal’. These discourses perhaps provide the greatest potential for producing a radical structural shift within/to capital. Discourses of the concrete universal are those discourses which lie outside of the abstract universal horizon that the idea of ‘global capitalism’ represents. In this sense, they are discourses of the Real, possessing no means for translating between the twin poles of the ontological parallax. Any movement of the concrete universal into the realm of the hegemonic imaginary will produce some degree of dislocation because of the ultimate incommensurability between the elements involved. The concrete universal, as both the excess which is generated by the abstract universal and the material substance upon which that universal horizon is constituted, cannot be translated into the terms of that horizon without a dislocation occurring to that same horizon, that is, to the idea of global capitalism.
We see this at work in the area of climate change. Although climate change is not simply a discursive construction, it still appears within the broad horizon of global capitalism as a discursive element, as the concrete universal of capitalism; it appears as ‘an effect of nature’, as ‘the natural’. This dislocates the universal capitalist imaginary. This process is currently occurring in relation to climate change. Reports continue to surface regarding the incommensurability between the capitalist economic system and the limits of the environment (PCE, 2005; Stern, 2006). Although symbolic resources currently exist to domesticate this symptom, such as through increased or targeted taxes, a dislocation of some degree is likely to occur if the concrete universal were to continue to assert pressure. Similarly, this might be possible if a unity could be formed between the peoples of the Third World, perhaps under a signifier such as ‘Majority World’. This unity could allow a position of concrete universality to emerge, evoking a degree of dislocation, providing that the fantasmatic resources which support the hegemony are unable to domesticate the symptoms. This proviso, however, perhaps underpins the prospects for both social change and stability.
Discourses of the concrete universal also identify the manner in which fantasy and jouissance sustain universal horizons over and above the words through which those horizons are symbolised. That is to say, subjects are enabled to identify with particular images of the universal because they enjoy the experience of doing so, such experiences grip them. The loosening of this grip does not occur simply though the production of rational arguments that reveal the irrationality of the universal horizon (such that the global production of wealth relies upon the exploitation of localised groups), but rather the provocation of experiences of abjection, such as anxiety and trauma. These occur to the subject through their exposure to the Real.
Anxiety and trauma occur when the concrete universal impacts upon the universal horizon, such as when one comes into face-to-face contact with extreme poverty, perhaps by bumping into a homeless person on a city street. This is what offers the prospect for change, as the subject seeks to find an alternative, more bearable discourse that can domesticate the unsettling effects of the Real.
An alternative field of discourse to that of ‘the concrete universal’ which can be mobilised to interrupt a structural formation, I have termed ‘discourses of the symptom’. This very thesis is itself such a discourse. These discourses use the terms that have been set by an abstract universal, such as capitalism or multiculturalism. Notwithstanding their location within abstract universals, discourses of the symptom are able to view in a dialectical manner both the abstract universal which frames them and their constitutive exception.
When viewed from the perspective of this form of discourse, the constitutive exception emerges as ’the symptom’ to the abstract universal. More specifically, the symptom refers to the disruptive impact which the concrete universal has upon the universal imaginary by virtue of its own location within that imaginary. To rephrase the point, discourses of the symptom reveal the limit point of the universal, the point of its failure.
Such a point is the Truth of the universal. This is not a meta-physical Truth which remains the same in all possible symbolisations. Rather it is the embodiment of Truth in a particular content. The core to a Žižekian-inspired political analysis is not to expose the contingency of a hegemonic social construction (although this is a useful political strategy) but rather to reveal the Truth as the central element of the universal totality. The Truth of any construction, its concrete universal, is not purely contingent, but rather the hard material core to that construction; this is the point which paradoxically holds together the abstract universal yet remains its constitutive exception.
That is, a Zizekian-styled political approach does not seek to deconstruct a contingent political position so that it can be reformulated in a more progressive manner, but rather to reveal the point against which all political constructions are combating, the concrete universal. Here, we are not talking about an ahistorical lack or Real against which all symbolisations battle, but rather a historical lack, R2, or the symbolic Real; in our times, that symbolic Real is, global capital.
Thus, in a mutually constituting manner, the form that Truth takes is always particular to its content and the particular content that is involved in this takes on a form that enables it to play a universalising role. Thereby, a symptom can embody the Truth of a particular edifice because it represents a universal form (that being the point of failure of the hegemonic imaginary) and the universal form only takes shape through the particular content in which it occurs (Brockelman, 2003, p.196). Discourses of the symptom reveal this point of Truth not by embodying the concrete universal, but rather, as Žižek states, by confronting a universal horizon with its ‘unbearable example’ (Zizek, 2006a, p.13), that is, by practicing concrete universality.
Discourses of the concrete universal, reviewed above, provide the more powerful force of the two kinds of discourse in terms of inducing radical political change. That said, discourses of the symptom supply a more viable kind of political strategy given that they operate from a position that is fully within the universal edifice. For those seeking to produce social change, the concrete universal – like the brute fact of climate change – forever remains outside of their control. Thus, as political strategies, neither the increasing degradation of the environment nor the unity of the disavowed ‘Majority World’ population can be relied upon for dislocating capitalism. Neither is under political influence. This is not to suggest that in another context discourses of the concrete universal should be ignored. Indeed, perhaps the most efficient strategy is a combination of the two.
The act of identifying with the symptom, of practicing concrete universality, opens up a space for the concrete universal itself to operate, for it to emerge as the unbearable example of the abstract universalising horizon. The method which has been created in this thesis is a grounded reflection of this abstracted strategy. By revealing the deadlock that is inherent to capital, its incommensurability within itself as a totality, one can practice concrete universality through a ‘short-circuit analysis’. It is this strategy which reveals the political potential of psychoanalysis. This thesis, as a short-circuit analysis – a discourse of the symptom – has the role of thinking both sides of the parallax at once. By doing so through the dialectical notion of totality, we see that the methodology suggested in this thesis offers an alternative strategy for anti-capitalist engagement. Specifically, rather than having to choose between alternative conceptions of capitalism, its abstract and concrete forms, dialectical logic allows an analyst the ability to think both options at once (for example, that global capital brings both great wealth and extreme poverty, that capitalist societies can become increasingly energy efficient yet be destroying the climate at the same time). This Žižekian style of analysis allows the symptoms of capital to be seen not as contingent failures but, rather, as disavowed elements of capital that constitute its very possibility. This thesis thereby suggests that the most constructive form of anti-capitalist engagement is to reveal the disavowed hard kernel upon which capital is based, but not as an element in itself, but rather as the concrete universal of capitalist totality. It is the ability to think both elements of the parallax at once, to contrast the concrete universal with the hegemonic imaginary, which brings the possibility of dislocation. Contemplation of, and intervention with, the concrete universal alone (of climate change or of poverty) is insufficient.
This conclusion reflects what has increasingly become Žižek’s core position. In an elaboration of this position, Žižek has come to interpret capitalism as a modality of the Real. By this he means that there is nothing outside of capital, it is the point to which all socio-political discourses ultimately return. Therefore, for Žižek, to act is to act only against the background of capital. There is no empty place from which to speak. Here Žižek argues that rather than involve oneself in local politics – to develop bold courses of action that do not threaten the universal edifice despite their apparent radicality – it is better not to act at all (Zizek, 2006b, p.212). These apparently radical transgressions ultimately allow capital to run smoothly, they allow for the construction of a constitutive outside to capitalism, against which the profit motive can pit itself and perhaps subsume. Therefore Žižek reverses Marx’s famous thesis 11, where Marx contends that while philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it. Instead, Žižek suggests:
The first task today is precisely not to succumb to the temptation to act, to intervene directly and change things (which then inevitably ends in a cul-de-sac of debilitating impossibility: ‘What can one do against global capital?’), but to question the hegemonic ideological coordinates. (Žižek, 2006b, p. 238)
In its place, Žižek contends that critical analysis must rehabilitate the concept of the universal through a notion of totality in which totality is riven from within, that is, through dialectical analysis. This totality takes in both the abstract and concrete universal of capitalism, vitally allowing access to the gap that is inherent in every symbolic performance, that is, the Real. The key is not to focus exclusively on one side, such as suggesting that capitalism is nothing but poverty nor that capitalism is the best method for producing economic wealth. Neither is it particularly productive to try to find a mediating point, such as an empty signifier, to suture the gap inherent in capitalism, as Laclau suggests. Rather, Žižek asserts, the best position to take in attempting to disrupt capitalism is to think both alternatives at the same time. By taking on both perspectives, the disavowed foundations of capital, as well as the inherent gap within capital, are thus revealed.
Summary
The parallax view, as presented by Žižek, underpins the methodology being suggested by this thesis. This thesis draws upon just two of the modalities of the parallax that Žižek presents: the political and the ontological. An ontological parallax occurs between the abstract and concrete universal within a totality. Here the abstract universal is the hegemonic horizon, it provides the fundamental background against which all other discourses operate. In contrast the concrete universal is the singular exception to this universal horizon.
Conversely, the concrete universal is an exception that is necessary for the constitution of the universal imaginary; absolute poverty, as a concrete universal that sits against the wealth of capitalism, is a salient contemporary example. Therefore, while the concrete universal is an exception to the abstract universal, its singularity bypasses the particular and exceeds the abstract universal horizon. To reiterate this point, the concrete universal, as an exception to the universal imaginary is not simply one element amongst the many that make up that horizon, but rather – despite its status as an exception– it is the very element that constitutes the universal horizon. As such, the concrete universal is necessarily repressed by the hegemonic horizon. This repression returns through the symptom, which reveals the Truth of the abstract universal and the presence of the parallax gap.
The second modality of parallax upon which this thesis draws is the political parallax. Political parallaxes occur between two relatively symmetrical political formations, separated by a social antagonism. This social antagonism creates a condition of incommensurability between the discourses; there is no common language between them. The social antagonism thus reveals the limit point of the discursive formation. This gap is often filled by empty signifiers which offer the prospect of a suture. The impossibility of such a suture, however, is revealed by the emergence of symptoms within the political parallax. Such symptoms occur when the two positions attempt to translate into each other. An example is illustrative here.
As has been noted at the start of this chapter, a strong political parallax is in operation with contemporary capitalism between developmentalism and environmentalism. This occurs in New Zealand politics, particularly within Green discourse. The Green Party is unable to articulate an economic position because its ecological goals are incommensurable with the interests of capital, capital being the social antagonism that gets actualised here. Therefore any attempt at economic policy is fragmented at best, often contradicting its ecological claims; the symptom of this parallax occurs at this point in the discourse (Donald, 2005a, 2005b; Fitzsimons, 2006).
Empty signifiers such as ‘Sustainable Development’, which offer the prospect of a suture of a parallax, are associated with the production of jouissance. Jouissance, as an excess to the Real, is a vital element of Žižek’s rehabilitation of universality; it offers a materialist element to dialectical logic. The abstract universal itself provides subjects the experience of jouissance, of enjoyment, as it offers a possibility of staging a return to an absent state of fullness. These universal horizons are centred around an empty signifier, or the objet a, which have a suturing effect by offering an object for libidinal investment as a substitute for lack. At the same time, because of the impossibility of this suture, the universal horizon requires a certain degree of failure. That failure can not bring about total meltdown – a constitutive failure – as might occur when the concrete universal dislocates a horizon, but rather a displacement of the negativity that is inherent to the symbolic order.
There are two primary modalities of this displacement, external antagonisms and the symptom. External antagonisms are ‘straw enemies’ which are created to stand in for the impossibility of social fullness, of society. Every universal horizon sends out the message that the removal of these antagonisms will restore the lost fullness of society. Of course, this postulated fullness is always only an imaginary creation. Nonetheless, antagonisms are required by the abstract universal and as such they are enjoyed, they are a site of jouissance.
The operation of the symptom, in contrast, is split between its role as an antagonism and the links that exist between symptoms and the concrete universal. Ideological fantasies give the message that symptoms, too, are antagonisms that can be eliminated. Nonetheless, there is a difference between the external antagonisms noted above and symptoms. The former is a fantasmatic creation, whereas symptoms are the Real, material limit-points of universal, hegemonic imaginaries. The symptom carries with it an element of the Real, because it reveals the presence of the concrete universal, which embodies the failure of the universal imaginary. Through ideological fantasy, symptoms are generally represented in a more palpable form than the concrete universal, appearing as external antagonisms that can be removed. However, symptomatic antagonisms always suggest the possibility of a dislocation via their association with the Real.
Despite the necessary existence of symptoms, ideological fantasy manages to domesticate the effect of the Real that is inherent in symptoms. This domestication occurs through a number of techniques. Along with repression, ideological fantasy and external antagonism, super-ego demand is also common. We see the super-ego in operation within charity discourse, or Green/ethical consumerism. Perhaps the most effective device, however, is the operation of disavowal and fetishism. Disavowal occurs when the subject acknowledges the presence of the symptom, yet continues to act as if it does not exist. Disavowal is allowed to continue because of the existence of a fetished object. This object mediates the effect of the Real, via the subject, by acting as a point of jouissant investment for the subject. Thus the subject may know very well about the existence of poverty, poverty which is in stark contrast to the universal imaginary of capitalism in which they have affectively invested. Nevertheless, because of the existence of commodified objects, the subject is able to maintain this paradoxical state because the commodity substitutes for the gap that is opened up by the contradictory nature of these parallel beliefs.
Another common fetish which supports the disavowal of symptoms within capitalism is the idea that there is no alternative to capital. This allows the subject to unquestionably accept capital as a universal horizon: any failure is displaced as unavoidable or apolitical. Disavowal and fetishism are powerful forces because of the enjoyment inherent in them. The power of jouissance is such that the condition is not seen as a problem. The operation of disavowal and fetishism, along with that of the parallax view and the devices that are used to domesticate symptoms, reveal the necessity of a materialist analysis.
The issue of materialism, which jouissance raises, divides Žižek’s work from that of Ernesto Laclau. Laclau operates within much the same theoretical and political territory as Žižek, indeed his approach features a more grounded methodology for political analysis, an element that has been replicated in the methodology created in this thesis. As such, Laclau and Žižek’s works align. They both work roughly within the field of Lacanian political analysis, although each has a different take on what form this should take. In particular, Laclau has been influential in his development of the concepts of antagonism and empty signifiers. However, Laclau’s work is lacking because of the manner in which he interprets the Real.
In Laclau’s work, the Real is nothing more than a limit-point to the discursive. In contrast, Žižek takes the Real to be both a limit and an excess. By acknowledging the Real as a source of excess, the notions of jouissance and fantasy develop as vital tools for political analysis. These factors explain why social constructions that appear conditional and contingent, maintain such fixity. Nonetheless, Laclau is very critical of Žižek’s approach to the political. In their three way debate in Contingency, Hegemony and Universality (Judith Butler the other contributor), Laclau argues that Žižek is not a political commentator, but rather merely produces “a psychoanalytic discourse which draws its examples from the politico-ideological field” (Laclau, 2000a, p.289, Original emphasis). By this Laclau suggests that Žižek has nothing constructive to offer to politics, rather that Žižek’s is a purely deconstructive discourse. Indeed, in the paragraph previous to the one just cited, Laclau states (in relation to Žižek’s desire to overthrow capitalism without a ready-made alternative):
Only if that explanation is made available will we be able to start talking politics and abandon the theological terrain. Before that I cannot even know what Žižek is talking about and the more this exchange progresses, the more suspicious I become that Žižek himself does not know either (p.289).
Is the Realm of Politics beyond Psychoanalysis?
This disagreement revolves around what each of the theorist designates as a political approach. The Žižekian approach has already been laid out at the start of this chapter; it is the position taken in the thesis. To reiterate, it is theorised that psychoanalysis is inherently political because of the negative ontological status of the social. This negative ontology means that social constructions are contingent. Therefore any fixation is a political fixation. Žižek’s work is political because it operates by revealing both the contingency of a political formation, involving its symptoms and the unconscious supplement which supports the hegemonic discourse, as well the concrete universal, the hard material Truth of the discursive formation. This form of political analysis, which this thesis attempts to vehecularise in terms of a grounded methodology, is the political approach for a Žižekian perspective. For Laclau though, this is not far enough. Instead Laclau seeks to develop a positive form of politics. Here we rely on the distinction made by Stavrakakis between politics, as the day-to-day operation of the political, and the political itself (Stavrakakis, 1999, p.71). Laclau attempts to form a political model to be institutionalised: radical democracy. Radical democracy seeks to institutionalise the gap formed by the negative ontology, as revealed in Lacanian theory. This is very much a formal operation: radical democracy cannot prescribe its own content. Rather, Laclau suggests that a free society is one which is aware of the contingency of its own construction (Laclau, 1990, p.211). In this way the contingency of social constructions is to be constantly revealed and battled over; this is the ‘radical’ in radical democracy.
Stavrakakis goes further in suggesting that radical democracy must go beyond the ‘ethics of harmony’ that seeks to constitute an ideal society, a utopia (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.127). Instead Stavrakakis argues that psychoanalytic politics needs to develop an ‘ethics of the Real’ (in the limited Laclauian sense) that revolves around the constant contestation of meaning. The concept of psychoanalytic politics –in the sense of the application of a political approach in government policy and related areas – is a controversial one, indeed it signals one of the boundaries of this piece of work.
Many theorists within the Lacanian field believe that psychoanalysis and politics do not mix well, or at all. The argument revolves around what to do with the gap that is created by the negative ontological constitution of the symbolic. There are three significantly differing perspectives. The first, characterised by Elizabeth Bellamy (1993), Sean Homer (1996), Simon Tormey and Andrew Robinson (Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2003, 2005) seeks to construct a positive imaginary to fill this gap. In doing so, they query the possibility, and the desirability, of creating a psychoanalytic form of politics. It is argued, particularly by Homer, that because ideological fantasy, which sutures the gap, is so enjoyable, any political position that refuses to posit an ideological position is impotent. Because attempts at psychoanalytic politics, such as Laclau’s radical democracy, attempt to move away from any form of ideological suture, they are ineffective (Homer, 1996, p.106-8). Homer recognises the limitations of psychoanalysis in this regard and thus states that the task of creating a positive imaginary is beyond the limits of psychoanalysis.
There is some warrant to this approach, particularly as a strategy for thinking about politics within their existing form. There are, however, compelling reasons to surpass it. Firstly, as has been documented throughout this thesis, any political formation that operates through an imaginary position – as Homer suggests a political position must – needs to find a way of displacing the negativity that is inherent to the symbolic realm; as history shows, the positing of external antagonisms in order to explain the lack of fullness in a society can be disastrous e.g. Hitler’s marginalisation of the Jews. Psychoanalytic political analysis has the value of avoiding the kind of positive imaginary positions (or, more importantly the resulting displacement of lack) inherent to this kind of approach.
Secondly, politics of this form cannot move outside of the constraints that exist upon the symbolic realm. It can operate within the terms of the unconscious supplement which supports the symbolic, but it cannot bring any kind of radical shift. Only an intervention with the supplement can produce shifts of a radical magnitude.
This critique also applies to Laclau’s approach. In addition to the radical democratic project, Laclau generates a more general political strategy for the Left, involving the creation of a coalition of new social movements under the unity of an empty signifier. The success of that signifier turns upon its ability to fill the gap between the diverging perspectives and projects of those social movements. Indeed, Laclau suggests that this new, combined movement such be under the guise of the radical democracy movement (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.176). Žižek is particularly critical of this approach because it cannot move outside of the conditions set by global capital.
In order to progress beyond this apparent impasse between the radical democratic project and political psychoanalysis, we should refer back to the distinction Stavrakakis makes between politics and the political. Žižek’s approach, with which this thesis associates, operates solely within the more general domain of the political. Thus, it offers a strategy for achieving radical political shifts and a method for critiquing everyday politics, but does not present a way forward for the operation of ‘regular’ politics. This is perhaps one of the weaknesses of the Žižek’s approach. Conceivably, here, Homer is correct; psychoanalytic politics are not relevant. Alternatively, it could be that Homer and Bellamy are looking for the wrong kind of outcome from psychoanalytic analyses. Neither Lacan nor Žižek argue that psychoanalytic ideas can be constituted for a utopian ethical/political order; this is simply outside of the bounds of psychoanalysis. I do not believe that many would (or should) be willing to support the ‘Lacanian Party’ in the 2008 New Zealand elections. But the impossibility of utopia does not rule out more ‘progressive’ political constructions.
The difference between utopian politics and simple societal improvement relies on a distinction between that lack which is ahistorical, as in the effect of the Real upon the symbolic order, and the lack which is historically conditioned, that is, capital. In a time when global capital has produced a condition in which humanity is paradoxically living both far beyond and beneath its material needs and the capacity of the planet to support those needs, it is this historical lack that deserves the political interest of psychoanalysis. Nonetheless, an unanswered question remains: What can psychoanalysis offer politics beyond ideological critique and dislocation? Is it that Lacanian theory can only offer a mode of understanding of the social, one that can be applied to political critique, but cannot offer a solution beyond dislocation? Here we again return to the vital distinction between politics and the political. Just as the Real sets the limits for the construction of reality, the political serves as the precondition for the operation of politics. Therefore, we may conclude by stating that, yes, psychoanalysis has no role in politics: its influence goes well beyond it, into the political.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
7. Poverty
Global poverty is one of the major issues facing humanity. As such, along with climate change, it is one of the main areas of concern for the political Left. Like climate change, poverty is a symptom of capitalism; its existence reveals a point of failure within the global capitalist imaginary. Discursively, the major difference between the two symptoms is that where Green ideology is increasingly impacting upon global society, global poverty does not have the same ubiquitous influence. This is not to suggest that the existence of poverty is ignored or repressed; the statistical evidence is overwhelming. Rather, because those in the western world are divorced from the extremes of third world poverty, poverty is able to be constructed, and accessed, in a manner and time of our choosing. This means that instead of having to cope with the constant return of the symptom, discourses of global capital and development are able to effectively disavowal the presence of poverty as that upon which the capitalist production of wealth (and ‘freedom’) is produced.
7.1 Defining Poverty
Poverty is a term with multiple interpretations. The most common divide is between relative and absolute poverty. Relative poverty is a statistical definition, normally based on a nominal level below the median average income within an economy. Because of its political definition, relative poverty is a controversial measure. Indeed, the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development does not measure ‘poverty’, rather ‘low-incomes’ based on three-level scale; 40, 50 and 60% of median family income (The Social Report, 2005). However, those who are considered in poverty in New Zealand may have an income that would place them amongst the wealthy in a third world economy. Absolute poverty, on the other hand, is measured in relation to a total lack of resources to continue living and is still often symbolised in monetary terms. Less than US$1 a day is a regular measurement point for absolute poverty. Such measurements of poverty, however, are an attempt to name the Real, particularly in the case of absolute poverty. These arbitrary measurement points are in themselves political and contribute to the domestication of poverty as a symptom. Rather, it is better to let the meaning of poverty continue to be in a state of tension, never quite definitively conceptualised. In this way it continues to have a Real effect. For those who experience absolute poverty, definitions are fairly irrelevant, particularly to those who are facing the immediacy of death via poverty. It is this type of poverty that we shall be referring to within this chapter.
Following on from the analysis of Green ideology, this chapter seeks to examine the manner in which discourses within capitalism deal with the symptom of poverty. Because poverty, as a symptom, does not impact on the universal imaginary of capital as often as Green ideology, it is difficult to find a coherent body of thought that could be labelled ‘poverty ideology’. Rather, poverty exists as a symptom amongst numerous differing discourses, centring on the theme of global development. These discourses include global development itself, human rights, charity, health and trade, amongst others. Recently though strong discursive efforts to ‘eliminate’ poverty have developed. These efforts have reached the western world under the guise of the ‘Make Poverty History’ and ‘ONE’ campaigns. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations as part of their Millennium Declaration are in the same category as these campaigns; indeed, the MDGs may be their precursor. The prominence of these discourses - which have also forced other responses, critical or otherwise - suggests the future possibility of an ideology of poverty developing- that is, a system of discourses around the term poverty.
At the moment, however, no such body of thought exists. Instead, in this chapter, we shall examine the discursive responses to the symptom of poverty, both as it is presented in the most recent campaigns against poverty, and as the result of the concrete universal which is absolute poverty. The most prominent theoretical text representing the recent campaigns to eliminate poverty is Jeffery Sach’s The End of Poverty (2005). Sachs both describes poverty through his notion of the global development ladder, and sets forward a prescription for end poverty ‘in our time’. Sach’s discourse is particularly interesting because it does not deny the existence of poverty to any extent. Rather, he proposes a ‘developmental ladder’ upon which all nations lie. Sach’s main interest is getting those in absolute poverty onto this ladder. As such, in terms of discursive strategy for the symptom, The End of Poverty is an ideological acknowledgement of the symptom, contending that poverty is not necessary, but rather ‘development’ is possible for all.
7.2 Absolute Poverty as the Concrete Universal
Here, Sachs falls into a parallax of ontological difference. He describes in specific terms the existence and experience of extreme poverty; indeed he produces a theory of the ‘poverty trap’ that keeps people in poverty. However, Sachs cannot link the actual existence of poverty with his notion of the global economy; there is no common ground between the concrete universal - absolute poverty- and the universal horizon of ‘global development’. This is an example of the operation of an ontological parallax par excellence. This parallax is often in operation within discourses of poverty. The World Bank series on the ‘voices’ of poverty also describes the experiences of the poor from the perspective of the poor through participative research (Narayan, Chambers, Shah, & Petesch, 2000; Narayan, Patel, Schafft, Rademacher, & Koch-Schulte, 2000; Narayan & Petesch, 2002). Yet, like The End of Poverty, this series does not, or cannot, make a link between these conditions of poverty and the global economy. On the other side of the parallax, the World Bank publishes, and makes regular interventions into the global economy. Yet it cannot seem to bring the two perspectives together, accept under suturing empty signifiers, such as development.
Development is at the centre of Sach’s discourse. Inequality is inherent to all notions of development, whether economic or otherwise. Classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Riccardo have long considered some degree of inequality as necessary in capitalism. Within the global economy, inequality is patently unjust; the life-chances of the poorest, to enter into capitalist discourse, are incomparable to that of the elite. Inequality was an excepted part of the discourse, because it had been assumed to be just; to each according to their efforts and merits. Because of the dislocating edge to global inequality, it is largely disavowed within contemporary capialist discourse. Thus, Sach’s work contrasts to horizons of other capitalist discourses, in that Sach’s restores inequality as a necessary factor within capitalism. Therefore, ‘sweatshops’ are largely considered a positive entity, although they are often considered a symptom of capitalist wealth (Sachs, 2005,p.11). This broadening of the universal horizon has the effect of domesticating this symptom, although it acts to further highlight poverty in its absolute form. As has been noted in previous chapters, the symptom is developed as an excess to the abstract universal, an excess which reveals the failure of that universal. Therefore the content of the symptom depends upon the discursive context in which it is formed; the symptoms of Sach’s development ladder are vitally different to a pure free-market approach to global economics. In the latter sweatshops can be considered a symptom, particularly in contrast to the highly symbolic consumption-orientated capitalism of the west, as highlighted by Naomi Klein in No Logo (2001).
In contrast, the symptoms of Sach’s approach to development lie in two separate areas. The first is the symptom that Sachs acknowledges (although not as a symptom), those who are ‘caught in a poverty trap’ and cannot make it onto the global development ladder. Secondly, there are symptoms of the parallax by which Sach’s work is inflicted; the incommensurability between global economics and the ground level analysis of poverty. This chapter examines both the manner in which symptoms have been constructed by Sachs and others amongst the ‘make poverty history’ discourses, as well as the discursive strategies that contain the symptoms produced by the ontological parallax of these constructions of poverty. Certainly there is a strong link between the construction of symptoms and their discursive domestication, which we shall turn to shortly. However, what is not subject only to symbolic construction is the concrete universal, from which the symptom stems.
The concrete universal is the constitutive necessity of the symptom; the concrete universal takes on the singular exception to the abstract universal, in this case poverty, and exceeds the universal apparatus; that poverty is necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. For Jeffery Sachs the symptom is those who are not on the ladder, the 1/6th of the world population who live on less than $1 a day (Sachs, 2005, p.18-9). In this thesis it is argued that this symptom is a constitutive element of capital; the concrete universal. That is, the occurrence of this absolute poverty is necessary for the continued progress of global capitalism. The basic logic of capitalism is the need to continously produce profits. Profit, in its rawest form is produced through the gap between production costs and selling price. This gap has been maintained through an over supply of raw materials, both human and natural. The excess of supply has kept the price of these production costs down. When it comes to natural inputs such as primary commodities, this process is increasingly complex, dealing with subsidies and tariffs. With labour though, the situation is less complicated. The excess supply of labour keeps labour prices at a minimum. In Sach’s developmental ladder this is acceptable. What Sachs ignores, however, is that for labour prices to be kept at this price, there has to be a reserve army of workers willing to work for that price. When wages are already dangerously low, for those who remain in reserve, unemployment often means death.
Thus death via poverty is both an exception to the capitalist imaginary and a requirement of the system; a concrete universal. The ultimate reserves are those outside of the manufacturing sector, who live on subsistence existence, within, but essentially outside the capitalist economy. Arguments of this sort enter into the Marxist territory of theories of miltary imperialism and the construction of economic empires (see Arrighi, 2005a, 2005b). Such a realm of argumentation is not the desired positioning of this thesis, although the insights of this area of Marxism are not denied. Instead, what I seek to establish is the necessary link between the capitalist production of extreme wealth and the equally capitalist production of extreme and absolute poverty.
Ultimately, the link between absolute poverty and capitalist wealth is repressed, or at least disavowed. This missing link is the key to the parallax in operation in the discursive construction of poverty. However, while the concrete universal cannot be accessed through the terms of the universal horizon, its symptoms do appear. This chapter will now move the analysis of the discursive strategies used to domesticate the Real effect of the symptom. The analysis will follow the methodology laid out in Chapter 5 and applied to Green ideology in the previous chapter. There are several similarities between the domestication of symptoms in Green ideology and in terms of poverty, although the nature of the symptoms is quite different. Poverty is easier to ignore than climate change or environmental degradation and as such is more often repressed, or at least disavowed. The most common strategy though is super-ego demand - we ought to eliminate poverty; the super-ego is the most common technique, used by charities such as World Vision, as well as the Make Poverty History campaign. However, there are also opportunities for disrupting capitalism through poverty as a symptom and the concrete universal. Unlike Green ideology, the concrete universal can exist in its own terms as a discourse. Through this discursive existence, the concrete universal can apply dislocating pressure to the universal horizon. Before we return to this possibility, however, we must first review the discursive strategies for the domestication of the symptom in order to maintain the capitalist universal horizon. We shall start with repression.
7. 3 Discursive Strategies; Repression
All hegemonic discourses operate with an element of repression; that of the concrete universal upon which they are based. Poverty is no exception. The link between an abstract universal within capitalism, especially those that emphasise capital’s ability to generate wealth, and the concrete universal of absolute poverty is an impossible one. This impossibility generates the operation of repression. Repression occurs so the subject avoids the horrific exposure to the Real. In this case, as well as the parallax Real, the concrete universal is linked to the real Real, the hard kernel of horror. However, as has been noted, true repression of symptoms generally only occurs when they cannot be included within the universal horizon without a dislocation. This may be the case if capitalist subjects were regularly exposed to the true horror of absolute poverty and the concrete universal. But this is not the case. Rather poverty is able to be constructed through fantasy so as to be domesticated. Therefore there are few discourses which actively repress poverty as a symptom; the statistical evidence is overwhelmingly strong.
What is more common is the disavowal of the symptom. Within disavowal, the subject acknowledges the existence of the symptom, but simultaneously ignores it. Indeed, absolute poverty provides the disavowed foundation of capitalism, certainly when one considers the impact of colonial empires and slavery. In terms of repression, it is not the content of the symptom that is repressed in the disavowal of poverty; rather it is the relationship between poverty and wealth that is repressed. Many repress the possibility that capitalism may cause poverty as well as wealth, again we see the limitations of formalist logic. This kind of repression is seen in the work of anarcho-capitalist economist, David Friedman (son of Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Freidman) who writes;“Few people believe that capitalism leads inexorably to the impoverishment of the masses; the evidence against this thesis is too overwhelming” (Friedman, 1978:26).
In terms of the discursive strategies used to domesticate absolute poverty, we shall include this particular type of disavowal in the category of repression. Disavowals are only able to operate because the existence of a fetish. The most powerful fetished object in these discourses is that capitalism is the only feasible economic option. It is theorised that because capital has brought strong economic growth and a correspondent increase in living standards to the western world, than there is no reason that this cannot be applied to the rest of the world. This is an argument often used by Jeffery Sachs (2005, p.18-9). Sachs, and others, often cite the example of South-East Asia, where many people have been brought out of extreme poverty through economic growth bought on by the rapid expansion of the manufacturing sector through cheap labour. As Don Brash contends in relation to global poverty; “we need to continue with further growth and development. I cannot see any solution to the problems of the many desperately poor people in the Asia Pacific region that does not require a continuation of sustained economic growth” (2006).
Very similar to the kind of solutions proposed by Friedman and Brash, Ken Shirley, a former MP for the neo-liberal ACT party in New Zealand states that to eliminate poverty, capitalism has to go further than it has, to be truer to itself and remove all trade barriers. Shirley argues that once trade barriers have been removed, and capital is enabled to move freely without government interference, wealth can finally be shared globally. Shirley asserts; “I am appalled at the hypocrisy of some parties who rail against global trade and free trade agreements on the one hand and yet simultaneously argue that a greater commitment is required for overseas development assistance” (Shirley, 2005).
This kind of discursive method could well be defined as acknowledgement of the symptom, mediated by the positing of an external antagonism, rather than repression. The most powerful device for the repression of poverty as a symptom is the assertion that capital is the only possible option, or alternatively the formalist logic that because capital has brought wealth to some, it can bring wealth to all. However, despite the growing wealth of the world, for at least 1/6th of the global population, poverty is still an extreme reality. Therefore it is becoming increasingly obvious to many that something ought to be done about this excess. This acknowledgement of the symptom occurs through several different devices, to which we shall now turn.
7. 4 Acknowledgement of the Symptom
An acknowledgement of the existence of poverty, outside of the realm of repression or disavowal, is a production of fantasy. That is, because poverty does not ‘naturally’ exist within the universal horizon of most discourses of global capital, the discourse is able to construct poverty in a manner which is non-disruptive and that still maintains the consistency of the social. However, once the symptom has been acknowledged, the sheer scale of it means that it cannot be contained in fantasy, there is always an excess that needs further taming. The construction of the symptom and the domestication of its excess are the function of several factors, introduced in chapter 5. The predominant element is ideological fantasy, which maintains the consistency of the social, or at least the prospect of such consistency. The driver of this process is jouissance, specifically the unconscious drive around the idea of a return to a time of Jouissance. Thus symptoms like poverty are required to be domesticated, but paradoxically they are essential for the smooth functioning of the abstract universal, such is the impossibility of Jouissance.
7.4.i Ideological Fantasy and Antagonisms
Therefore ideological fantasy operates by reproducing the encounter with the symptom, but in a manner that is more manageable for the universal imaginary. In reproducing the symptom via fantasy, the Real element of the symptom is removed. This Real element is removed because fantasy presents the symptom as divorced from the concrete universal; it is not a constitutive exception, but rather a contingent failure or an alien intruder. This domestication occurs in poverty discourse. The predominant discursive conception of poverty in contemporary society, outside of the techniques of repression and disavowal detailed above, is the Make Poverty History campaign or the United Nations MDGs. Here poverty is constructed as something that can be fixed, it is within our control. Not that poverty is considered to be caused by capital, in that poverty is required by capital to produce wealth. Rather, it is posited that mistakes have been made in the past because the wrong version of capital has been used. Therefore, rather than capitalism being at fault for poverty, the application of capitalism has been wrong (Sachs, 2005,p.81-2).
This kind of strategy invokes an external antagonism. External antagonisms are the ‘straw’ enemies generated by a universal horizon. The main purpose for the production of these antagonisms is that it gives a visible reason for the failure of the abstract universal. Therefore while the universal orientates itself towards the removal of the antagonism, antagonisms are actually required for the maintenance of the universal; they provide jouissance for the subject. There are two predominant types of antagonism that are in operation within poverty discourse. The first type is posited to have occurred in the past, as Žižek details as one of his seven veils of fantasy in The Plague of Fantasies (Žižek, 1997,p.13-6). It does not matter whether this antagonism has actually occurred or not, what is important is that it is discursively represented. This past failure is postulated as a cause of contemporary failure. This form of antagonism is a strong feature of Sach’s work, where he details the reasons why some nations are in poverty and some are not (Sachs, 2005,p.74,79.249, 300-14). These causes range from the development of colonial empires, geographic conditions and incorrect structural adjustments previously made in the name of global development. This past failure gives a cause for the failures of the present and future. Rather than seeing the fault within the current universal horizon, this fault is attributed to previous events. As such, these past events become a point of jouissance. These antagonisms tend to lie on the abstract universal side of the parallax view.
The second type of external antagonism lies on the concrete universal side of the parallax. As I have noted, the key distinguishing feature of the parallax in terms of poverty is that the actual occurrence of poverty (the concrete universal) cannot be linked to the global economy that causes it. These antagonisms, which occur in the present, give reason for poverty in terms of the concrete universal. As such, they generally relate to the circumstances of those in poverty themselves. These range from blaming the victims of poverty, such as the common positioning of poverty as an effect of corrupt government or lazy/ignorant workers, to Sach’s more generous ‘poverty trap’, which features factors such as physical geography and societal demographics (Sachs, 2005, p.56-66). The main effect of these antagonisms is that they suggest a possible alternative cause to the concrete universal outside of its relationship with the universal imaginary within the ontological parallax; poverty is not caused by the wealth produced in the global economy, but rather an effect of a variety of external antagonisms. As has been noted, the accuracy of these antagonisms is often unimportant. While deeming Third World workers to be ‘ignorant’ or uneducated seems overwhelmingly unfair, in terms of the maintenance of the fantasmatic supplement supporting the abstract universal, it has the same effect as Sach’s poverty trap. Both these modes of antagonism mediate between the subject and the true horror of absolute poverty; they alleviate responsibility from the capitalist subject.
The positing of antagonisms is a core element of ideological fantasy; it removes the Real effect from the symptom. Contemporary hegemonic discourses on poverty have rotated around the fantasmatic construction of poverty, which domesticates its dislocating potential. Indeed, the very construction of the United Nations MDGs is a domestication of the Real in poverty. The symptom exists both as the Real, in that it represents the failure of the abstract universal via the presence of the parallax gap and also as a symbolic entity. The effect of naming the symptom largely domesticates the presence of the Real, although an excess still remains. This is the case with the Millennium Development Goals. Through the construction of poverty in this manner (the elimination of poverty is one of the central goals), the symptom enters into the discourse, and unconscious supplement, of the authority of the United Nations. Therefore the symptom no longer presses on the abstract universal; it has been domesticated by entering into the fantasmatic core of the United Nations. In terms of the construction of poverty, the act of symbolising poverty removes poverty from view. It is no longer a Real force threatening the universal horizon, but rather part of the existing symbolic framework. It is for this reason that governments can appear so eager to establish frameworks like the MDGs, but have no motivation to carry them out. This effect allows poverty to be continually disavowed; the idea of fixing the symptom is sufficient to achieve the domestication of the symptom.
7.4.ii Super-ego
Conversely, this domestication is never complete. Once the symptom enters into the discursive arena, either as a symbolic entity or as an effect of the Real, any symbolisation leaves an excess. This excess can be dealt with through one of three separate strategies. The first has already been outlined external antagonisms. The failure of something like the MDG’s can be explained by citing antagonisms, like the failure of western governments to comply, or the mismanagement of funds by nations receiving the assistance. The second has also been noted, the disavowal of the symptom. We shall further expand on these discursive strategies shortly. However, perhaps the most common discursive method for dealing with the excess in the symptom of poverty is super-ego demand. The construction of poverty is a super-ego construction; we ‘ought’ to do something about poverty (Sachs, 2005; Shirley, 2005). As such super-ego demand pervades most discourses on poverty and has led to the establishment of strong super-ego discourses, such as those of charities like World Vision.
The super-ego establishes guilt in the subject about the failure of the symbolic fabric. This guilt presses the subject to act upon the content of the failure. However, such an action does not remove the effect of the super-ego. Instead, the more the subject submits, the guiltier they feel. This is the main appeal of charitable organisations that operate around poverty. Organisations like World Vision or Tear Fund use images of malnourished small children and slogans such as “A child is waiting” (World Vision: A Child is Waiting, 2006). As has been previously detailed, super-ego demand is not an effective strategy for achieving change. Rather, it leaves the existing fantasmatic core intact, although it may make some small changes along the way. Normally, the subject seeks to find a way out of the super-ego cycle. Often the mediating affect of paying money, like in the sponsorship of a third-world child, allows the subject to divorce themselves of the responsibility for poverty and into an ideological edifice, such as the MDG’s, or into a state of disavowal.
The Make Poverty History campaign appears to have been aware of this effect. Rather than ask for donations, the campaign instead posited demands that could not be solved by the individual. At the same time it developed the dislocatory effect of the symptom. This strategy had the effect of not enabling the subject to have any easy way out of the super-ego cycle. Additionally, white wrist bands were sold and worn as a constant reminder of the super-ego demand of poverty. The suggested way out of this cycle was for citzens to demand that their governments do something about the conditions of poverty. Unfortunately, while this demand did occur, governments have been able to domesticate the dislocatory pressure by simply promising to do something.
This kind of super-ego demand has an additionally harmful effect. Instead of placing poverty in its properly political realm, charitable organisations and campaigns tend to present poverty as a humanitarian problem, a failure of human rights rather than political economy. This discursive positioning takes away the responsibility from both the subject and the capitalist mode of production (Žižek, 2005). Therefore poverty as a humanitarian project, as it is presented by Sachs, again reveals the parallax that is in operation. The demand of the super-ego is not linked to reducing our wealth, or radically altering our economic system, but rather of providing funding and support for “On-the-ground solutions for ending poverty” (Sachs, 2005,p.226-243).
7.4.iii Disavowal
The final discursive strategy for acknowledging, but domesticating the symptom has already been covered within this chapter; disavowal. However, we shall briefly return to it because of its importance in the operation of poverty discourse. What allows the disavowal of poverty to operate so effectively - that is, the acknowledgement of the existence of poverty, but a general ignorance towards it - are two separate factors. The first, which has already been discussed, is that poverty, as a symptom, does not regularly impact on the abstract universal imaginary of capital. It is nowhere near as all-pervading as symptoms like climate change.
The second reason was also in operation in Green ideology; commodity fetishism. In commodity fetishism, a commodity stands in for objet a, as the fantasised object to fulfill the lack in the Other. Simply put, the subject receives too much jouissance from the fetishised commodity involved in consumption to be dislocated by poverty. They may know very well that the clothing being purchased was made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, a fact to which the subject may be personally opposed. However, the jouissance involved in the consumption is too strong for the former ideal to become a salient factor. Conversely, there is often an excess involved in consumption, in that the symptom is never completely pacified. This excess has generated new initiatives, such as the growing popularity of ‘ethical’ or ‘fair-trade’ consumption. In most cases though, the fetishising of commodities through consumption based capitalism is too strong for the existence of poverty to have a dislocating effect on the western world as it currently stands. However, there are still possible opportunities for dislocation that exist through discourses of poverty. It is these possibilities which we shall now focus on.
7. 5 Discourses of the Symptom
The shift from discourses which acknowledge the symptom to discourses of the symptom, is accomplished via a short-circuit discursive reading. Through the short-circuit analysis, both sides of the parallax view become visible. Rather than constructing the symptom as a failure of the universal, in the short-circuit view the symptom becomes constitutive; evidence of the concrete universal and the parallax gap. However, the vital difference is not interpretative. Rather it comes from the detachment of the symptom from the fantasmatic jouissance in which it was previously constructed. Therefore, the short-circuit reading achieves a Žižekian ‘traversal of the fantasy’. The displacement of fantasy allows a reconstruction of the status of the symptom, a very powerful force for socio-political analysis. However, as has been noted previously, discourses of the symptom have a limited dislocatory effect as they are still articulated within the terms of the universal horizon, therefore they have only a partial Real effect. Conversely, by opening up a gap within the abstract universal, by denying the suture of the parallax view, discourses of the symptom become part of a strong dislocatory effect when combined with the concrete universal itself.
As with Green ideology, discourses of the symptom have to be carefully distinguished from external discourses. External discourses are outside of the parallax view and the moment of universality. As such they offer little prospect of producing radical change, but more of a chance of sedimenting the hegemonic universal imaginary. This sedimentation occurs because, as Laclau contends, discourses establish limits by excluding a radical otherness. Laclau terms this exclusion the ‘constitutive outside’, because it is only the definition of the outside which allows the formulation of an interior. In discourses of poverty, we see this operation between forms of Islam and the capitalist West, particularly the United States. Militant Islam groups, such as Al-Qaeda often attract the poor and powerless, although they are often controlled by a rich elite. Militant Islam gives the powerless an identity via an antagonism; the capitalist West. This strategy, although often damaging to capitalist interests, is very unlikely to cause the downfall of capitalism. As we have seen with the actions of the Bush administration of the United States, militant Islam has only entrenched the fantasmatic core of capitalism, resulting in military conflict.
Instead, discourses of the symptom challenge the unconscious fantasmatic support of the unconscious universal. In terms of poverty, Marxism is the discourse which presently fills this role. Marxism, as has been noted previously, has moved from a discourse of the concrete universal (to which we shall soon turn) to a discourse of the symptom. Where Marxism was once a discourse of the proletariat, it has increasingly become a dissident voice distant from the now global working class. This is not to suggest that Marxism only recognises the workers of the western world. Rather, as a discourse of the symptom, Marxist discourse is often able to view capitalism awry, taking in both the global capitalism and the poverty it produces. Indeed, many Marxists, such as Samir Amin declare the western workers and unions are the enemies of the global proletariat both because they draw attention away from global poverty and because they have implicitly submitted to the capitalist system.
By being able to conceptualise the parallax gap, discourses of the symptom like Marxism have a unique, but productive role. This role involves attempting to deconstruct the universal horizon by displacing the symptom from its fantasmatic bonds. To accomplish this task, Marxism does not have to take on a positive imaginary such as the fantasmatic postulating of an alternative economic system. Rather, its role is to play on the symptom, revealing the excess in the universalist fantasy. By doing so, it is theorized that a space can be opened up within the universal imaginary that can be exploited by a discourse of the concrete universal. This has proved, however, to be a particularly difficult task, such is the fantasmatic closure inherent in global capital. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find an example of this kind of discursive strategy in mainstream media, although these discourses do exist in the academic world (see Arn, 1994; Limqueco & McFarlane, 1983). Often Marxism falls victim to the same parallax as capitalist discourse, focusing only on exploitation within economic relations in the Third World (Ercel, 2006). However, this is the task to which Marxism must apply itself to help achieve a radical structural global economic shift.
7.6 Discourses of the Concrete Universal
In the case of poverty, discourses of the concrete universal are generated in the terms of those experiencing poverty. On the other hand, these discourses are not limited to the concrete universal side of the parallax. That is, they are not constructed purely in terms of the experience of poverty, such as the Voices of the Poor series produced by the World Bank. Rather, as in all concrete universals, these discourses take on the singular exception to the universal horizon, absolute poverty, yet exceed the existing hegemonic imaginary. By doing so absolute poverty is not presented as a singular experience, but rather as a constitutive feature of capitalism. As has been detailed previously, the relationship between the abstract universal and the concrete universal is an impossible one; there are no terms available to establish a link. Therefore the presence of the concrete universal in the abstract universal produces a radical dislocation of the hegemonic imaginary. Capitalism, for example, is constructed around a fundamental horizon of justice in the production of wealth through the invisible hand that guides the market. There is no room for exploitation or constitutive poverty, at least in the abstracted capitalist imaginary. Therefore the impossible combination of the concrete universal of absolute poverty with the capitalist imaginary should bring a dislocation of the latter.
But what are the possibilities for achieving this task via poverty? The primary advantage (in terms of discursive strategy) that poverty has over climate change is that in poverty the concrete universal can become a discursive force. The concrete universal still remains a Real element because of the parallax gap. The parallax gap prevents a translation of terms between the abstract and concrete universal. Because of this gap, the concrete universal goes unsymbolised amongst the hegemonic; it is the impossible Real. From the alternative perspective, however, the Real is symbolised. The advantage here is that the concrete universal can be controlled; it can reproduce various discursive strategies. In contrast, the natural, as the concrete universal within Green ideology, operates largely outside of the direct control of human symbolic intervention.
The potential therefore exists for a movement from the concrete universal. Such a movement would involve the people of poverty, disavowed by capital, coming together under a united discourse. We can perhaps see this process in the use of the term ‘Majority World’ rather than Third World, to refer the idea that those in poverty are not simply an excess of capitalism, but rather constitutive the core population of the world. The key is the form of this unity. It is not effective if the discourse becomes an alternative imaginary to the hegemonic horizon. This - Laclauian inspired - strategy risks becoming an external discourse, a constitute outside rather than concrete universal. Alternatively, the discourse could fight a ‘war of position’ for the empty signifier which attempts to suture the parallax gap. Examples of these empty signifiers include ‘development’ and ‘progress’.
Conversely, such a strategy is likely to simply be pacified by the dominant discourse because it enters, but does not disturb, the unconscious supplement of the abstract universal. Rather, the key position is the presentation of the unity of poverty as a concrete universal; that is, as the constitutive exception of capitalism, a necessary requirement. This is not to suggest that this concrete universal holds a better normative or economic position that capitalism, but it holds a high possibility of dislocating capital, provided that it is able to place enough pressure on the fantasmatic unconscious supplement that supports the capitalist imaginary. The central message here is to practice concrete universality; to evoke the anxiety that is caused by exposing that which is necessarily disavowed for the continued functioning of the universal horizon. We shall now turn to the concluding chapter of this thesis, which examines the possibilities for practicing concrete universality, particularly in regard to global capital. In addition, the viability of this strategy (as well as the methodological approach to understanding the symptom) as a political method is discussed in detail.
7.1 Defining Poverty
Poverty is a term with multiple interpretations. The most common divide is between relative and absolute poverty. Relative poverty is a statistical definition, normally based on a nominal level below the median average income within an economy. Because of its political definition, relative poverty is a controversial measure. Indeed, the New Zealand Ministry of Social Development does not measure ‘poverty’, rather ‘low-incomes’ based on three-level scale; 40, 50 and 60% of median family income (The Social Report, 2005). However, those who are considered in poverty in New Zealand may have an income that would place them amongst the wealthy in a third world economy. Absolute poverty, on the other hand, is measured in relation to a total lack of resources to continue living and is still often symbolised in monetary terms. Less than US$1 a day is a regular measurement point for absolute poverty. Such measurements of poverty, however, are an attempt to name the Real, particularly in the case of absolute poverty. These arbitrary measurement points are in themselves political and contribute to the domestication of poverty as a symptom. Rather, it is better to let the meaning of poverty continue to be in a state of tension, never quite definitively conceptualised. In this way it continues to have a Real effect. For those who experience absolute poverty, definitions are fairly irrelevant, particularly to those who are facing the immediacy of death via poverty. It is this type of poverty that we shall be referring to within this chapter.
Following on from the analysis of Green ideology, this chapter seeks to examine the manner in which discourses within capitalism deal with the symptom of poverty. Because poverty, as a symptom, does not impact on the universal imaginary of capital as often as Green ideology, it is difficult to find a coherent body of thought that could be labelled ‘poverty ideology’. Rather, poverty exists as a symptom amongst numerous differing discourses, centring on the theme of global development. These discourses include global development itself, human rights, charity, health and trade, amongst others. Recently though strong discursive efforts to ‘eliminate’ poverty have developed. These efforts have reached the western world under the guise of the ‘Make Poverty History’ and ‘ONE’ campaigns. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations as part of their Millennium Declaration are in the same category as these campaigns; indeed, the MDGs may be their precursor. The prominence of these discourses - which have also forced other responses, critical or otherwise - suggests the future possibility of an ideology of poverty developing- that is, a system of discourses around the term poverty.
At the moment, however, no such body of thought exists. Instead, in this chapter, we shall examine the discursive responses to the symptom of poverty, both as it is presented in the most recent campaigns against poverty, and as the result of the concrete universal which is absolute poverty. The most prominent theoretical text representing the recent campaigns to eliminate poverty is Jeffery Sach’s The End of Poverty (2005). Sachs both describes poverty through his notion of the global development ladder, and sets forward a prescription for end poverty ‘in our time’. Sach’s discourse is particularly interesting because it does not deny the existence of poverty to any extent. Rather, he proposes a ‘developmental ladder’ upon which all nations lie. Sach’s main interest is getting those in absolute poverty onto this ladder. As such, in terms of discursive strategy for the symptom, The End of Poverty is an ideological acknowledgement of the symptom, contending that poverty is not necessary, but rather ‘development’ is possible for all.
7.2 Absolute Poverty as the Concrete Universal
Here, Sachs falls into a parallax of ontological difference. He describes in specific terms the existence and experience of extreme poverty; indeed he produces a theory of the ‘poverty trap’ that keeps people in poverty. However, Sachs cannot link the actual existence of poverty with his notion of the global economy; there is no common ground between the concrete universal - absolute poverty- and the universal horizon of ‘global development’. This is an example of the operation of an ontological parallax par excellence. This parallax is often in operation within discourses of poverty. The World Bank series on the ‘voices’ of poverty also describes the experiences of the poor from the perspective of the poor through participative research (Narayan, Chambers, Shah, & Petesch, 2000; Narayan, Patel, Schafft, Rademacher, & Koch-Schulte, 2000; Narayan & Petesch, 2002). Yet, like The End of Poverty, this series does not, or cannot, make a link between these conditions of poverty and the global economy. On the other side of the parallax, the World Bank publishes, and makes regular interventions into the global economy. Yet it cannot seem to bring the two perspectives together, accept under suturing empty signifiers, such as development.
Development is at the centre of Sach’s discourse. Inequality is inherent to all notions of development, whether economic or otherwise. Classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Riccardo have long considered some degree of inequality as necessary in capitalism. Within the global economy, inequality is patently unjust; the life-chances of the poorest, to enter into capitalist discourse, are incomparable to that of the elite. Inequality was an excepted part of the discourse, because it had been assumed to be just; to each according to their efforts and merits. Because of the dislocating edge to global inequality, it is largely disavowed within contemporary capialist discourse. Thus, Sach’s work contrasts to horizons of other capitalist discourses, in that Sach’s restores inequality as a necessary factor within capitalism. Therefore, ‘sweatshops’ are largely considered a positive entity, although they are often considered a symptom of capitalist wealth (Sachs, 2005,p.11). This broadening of the universal horizon has the effect of domesticating this symptom, although it acts to further highlight poverty in its absolute form. As has been noted in previous chapters, the symptom is developed as an excess to the abstract universal, an excess which reveals the failure of that universal. Therefore the content of the symptom depends upon the discursive context in which it is formed; the symptoms of Sach’s development ladder are vitally different to a pure free-market approach to global economics. In the latter sweatshops can be considered a symptom, particularly in contrast to the highly symbolic consumption-orientated capitalism of the west, as highlighted by Naomi Klein in No Logo (2001).
In contrast, the symptoms of Sach’s approach to development lie in two separate areas. The first is the symptom that Sachs acknowledges (although not as a symptom), those who are ‘caught in a poverty trap’ and cannot make it onto the global development ladder. Secondly, there are symptoms of the parallax by which Sach’s work is inflicted; the incommensurability between global economics and the ground level analysis of poverty. This chapter examines both the manner in which symptoms have been constructed by Sachs and others amongst the ‘make poverty history’ discourses, as well as the discursive strategies that contain the symptoms produced by the ontological parallax of these constructions of poverty. Certainly there is a strong link between the construction of symptoms and their discursive domestication, which we shall turn to shortly. However, what is not subject only to symbolic construction is the concrete universal, from which the symptom stems.
The concrete universal is the constitutive necessity of the symptom; the concrete universal takes on the singular exception to the abstract universal, in this case poverty, and exceeds the universal apparatus; that poverty is necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. For Jeffery Sachs the symptom is those who are not on the ladder, the 1/6th of the world population who live on less than $1 a day (Sachs, 2005, p.18-9). In this thesis it is argued that this symptom is a constitutive element of capital; the concrete universal. That is, the occurrence of this absolute poverty is necessary for the continued progress of global capitalism. The basic logic of capitalism is the need to continously produce profits. Profit, in its rawest form is produced through the gap between production costs and selling price. This gap has been maintained through an over supply of raw materials, both human and natural. The excess of supply has kept the price of these production costs down. When it comes to natural inputs such as primary commodities, this process is increasingly complex, dealing with subsidies and tariffs. With labour though, the situation is less complicated. The excess supply of labour keeps labour prices at a minimum. In Sach’s developmental ladder this is acceptable. What Sachs ignores, however, is that for labour prices to be kept at this price, there has to be a reserve army of workers willing to work for that price. When wages are already dangerously low, for those who remain in reserve, unemployment often means death.
Thus death via poverty is both an exception to the capitalist imaginary and a requirement of the system; a concrete universal. The ultimate reserves are those outside of the manufacturing sector, who live on subsistence existence, within, but essentially outside the capitalist economy. Arguments of this sort enter into the Marxist territory of theories of miltary imperialism and the construction of economic empires (see Arrighi, 2005a, 2005b). Such a realm of argumentation is not the desired positioning of this thesis, although the insights of this area of Marxism are not denied. Instead, what I seek to establish is the necessary link between the capitalist production of extreme wealth and the equally capitalist production of extreme and absolute poverty.
Ultimately, the link between absolute poverty and capitalist wealth is repressed, or at least disavowed. This missing link is the key to the parallax in operation in the discursive construction of poverty. However, while the concrete universal cannot be accessed through the terms of the universal horizon, its symptoms do appear. This chapter will now move the analysis of the discursive strategies used to domesticate the Real effect of the symptom. The analysis will follow the methodology laid out in Chapter 5 and applied to Green ideology in the previous chapter. There are several similarities between the domestication of symptoms in Green ideology and in terms of poverty, although the nature of the symptoms is quite different. Poverty is easier to ignore than climate change or environmental degradation and as such is more often repressed, or at least disavowed. The most common strategy though is super-ego demand - we ought to eliminate poverty; the super-ego is the most common technique, used by charities such as World Vision, as well as the Make Poverty History campaign. However, there are also opportunities for disrupting capitalism through poverty as a symptom and the concrete universal. Unlike Green ideology, the concrete universal can exist in its own terms as a discourse. Through this discursive existence, the concrete universal can apply dislocating pressure to the universal horizon. Before we return to this possibility, however, we must first review the discursive strategies for the domestication of the symptom in order to maintain the capitalist universal horizon. We shall start with repression.
7. 3 Discursive Strategies; Repression
All hegemonic discourses operate with an element of repression; that of the concrete universal upon which they are based. Poverty is no exception. The link between an abstract universal within capitalism, especially those that emphasise capital’s ability to generate wealth, and the concrete universal of absolute poverty is an impossible one. This impossibility generates the operation of repression. Repression occurs so the subject avoids the horrific exposure to the Real. In this case, as well as the parallax Real, the concrete universal is linked to the real Real, the hard kernel of horror. However, as has been noted, true repression of symptoms generally only occurs when they cannot be included within the universal horizon without a dislocation. This may be the case if capitalist subjects were regularly exposed to the true horror of absolute poverty and the concrete universal. But this is not the case. Rather poverty is able to be constructed through fantasy so as to be domesticated. Therefore there are few discourses which actively repress poverty as a symptom; the statistical evidence is overwhelmingly strong.
What is more common is the disavowal of the symptom. Within disavowal, the subject acknowledges the existence of the symptom, but simultaneously ignores it. Indeed, absolute poverty provides the disavowed foundation of capitalism, certainly when one considers the impact of colonial empires and slavery. In terms of repression, it is not the content of the symptom that is repressed in the disavowal of poverty; rather it is the relationship between poverty and wealth that is repressed. Many repress the possibility that capitalism may cause poverty as well as wealth, again we see the limitations of formalist logic. This kind of repression is seen in the work of anarcho-capitalist economist, David Friedman (son of Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Freidman) who writes;“Few people believe that capitalism leads inexorably to the impoverishment of the masses; the evidence against this thesis is too overwhelming” (Friedman, 1978:26).
In terms of the discursive strategies used to domesticate absolute poverty, we shall include this particular type of disavowal in the category of repression. Disavowals are only able to operate because the existence of a fetish. The most powerful fetished object in these discourses is that capitalism is the only feasible economic option. It is theorised that because capital has brought strong economic growth and a correspondent increase in living standards to the western world, than there is no reason that this cannot be applied to the rest of the world. This is an argument often used by Jeffery Sachs (2005, p.18-9). Sachs, and others, often cite the example of South-East Asia, where many people have been brought out of extreme poverty through economic growth bought on by the rapid expansion of the manufacturing sector through cheap labour. As Don Brash contends in relation to global poverty; “we need to continue with further growth and development. I cannot see any solution to the problems of the many desperately poor people in the Asia Pacific region that does not require a continuation of sustained economic growth” (2006).
Very similar to the kind of solutions proposed by Friedman and Brash, Ken Shirley, a former MP for the neo-liberal ACT party in New Zealand states that to eliminate poverty, capitalism has to go further than it has, to be truer to itself and remove all trade barriers. Shirley argues that once trade barriers have been removed, and capital is enabled to move freely without government interference, wealth can finally be shared globally. Shirley asserts; “I am appalled at the hypocrisy of some parties who rail against global trade and free trade agreements on the one hand and yet simultaneously argue that a greater commitment is required for overseas development assistance” (Shirley, 2005).
This kind of discursive method could well be defined as acknowledgement of the symptom, mediated by the positing of an external antagonism, rather than repression. The most powerful device for the repression of poverty as a symptom is the assertion that capital is the only possible option, or alternatively the formalist logic that because capital has brought wealth to some, it can bring wealth to all. However, despite the growing wealth of the world, for at least 1/6th of the global population, poverty is still an extreme reality. Therefore it is becoming increasingly obvious to many that something ought to be done about this excess. This acknowledgement of the symptom occurs through several different devices, to which we shall now turn.
7. 4 Acknowledgement of the Symptom
An acknowledgement of the existence of poverty, outside of the realm of repression or disavowal, is a production of fantasy. That is, because poverty does not ‘naturally’ exist within the universal horizon of most discourses of global capital, the discourse is able to construct poverty in a manner which is non-disruptive and that still maintains the consistency of the social. However, once the symptom has been acknowledged, the sheer scale of it means that it cannot be contained in fantasy, there is always an excess that needs further taming. The construction of the symptom and the domestication of its excess are the function of several factors, introduced in chapter 5. The predominant element is ideological fantasy, which maintains the consistency of the social, or at least the prospect of such consistency. The driver of this process is jouissance, specifically the unconscious drive around the idea of a return to a time of Jouissance. Thus symptoms like poverty are required to be domesticated, but paradoxically they are essential for the smooth functioning of the abstract universal, such is the impossibility of Jouissance.
7.4.i Ideological Fantasy and Antagonisms
Therefore ideological fantasy operates by reproducing the encounter with the symptom, but in a manner that is more manageable for the universal imaginary. In reproducing the symptom via fantasy, the Real element of the symptom is removed. This Real element is removed because fantasy presents the symptom as divorced from the concrete universal; it is not a constitutive exception, but rather a contingent failure or an alien intruder. This domestication occurs in poverty discourse. The predominant discursive conception of poverty in contemporary society, outside of the techniques of repression and disavowal detailed above, is the Make Poverty History campaign or the United Nations MDGs. Here poverty is constructed as something that can be fixed, it is within our control. Not that poverty is considered to be caused by capital, in that poverty is required by capital to produce wealth. Rather, it is posited that mistakes have been made in the past because the wrong version of capital has been used. Therefore, rather than capitalism being at fault for poverty, the application of capitalism has been wrong (Sachs, 2005,p.81-2).
This kind of strategy invokes an external antagonism. External antagonisms are the ‘straw’ enemies generated by a universal horizon. The main purpose for the production of these antagonisms is that it gives a visible reason for the failure of the abstract universal. Therefore while the universal orientates itself towards the removal of the antagonism, antagonisms are actually required for the maintenance of the universal; they provide jouissance for the subject. There are two predominant types of antagonism that are in operation within poverty discourse. The first type is posited to have occurred in the past, as Žižek details as one of his seven veils of fantasy in The Plague of Fantasies (Žižek, 1997,p.13-6). It does not matter whether this antagonism has actually occurred or not, what is important is that it is discursively represented. This past failure is postulated as a cause of contemporary failure. This form of antagonism is a strong feature of Sach’s work, where he details the reasons why some nations are in poverty and some are not (Sachs, 2005,p.74,79.249, 300-14). These causes range from the development of colonial empires, geographic conditions and incorrect structural adjustments previously made in the name of global development. This past failure gives a cause for the failures of the present and future. Rather than seeing the fault within the current universal horizon, this fault is attributed to previous events. As such, these past events become a point of jouissance. These antagonisms tend to lie on the abstract universal side of the parallax view.
The second type of external antagonism lies on the concrete universal side of the parallax. As I have noted, the key distinguishing feature of the parallax in terms of poverty is that the actual occurrence of poverty (the concrete universal) cannot be linked to the global economy that causes it. These antagonisms, which occur in the present, give reason for poverty in terms of the concrete universal. As such, they generally relate to the circumstances of those in poverty themselves. These range from blaming the victims of poverty, such as the common positioning of poverty as an effect of corrupt government or lazy/ignorant workers, to Sach’s more generous ‘poverty trap’, which features factors such as physical geography and societal demographics (Sachs, 2005, p.56-66). The main effect of these antagonisms is that they suggest a possible alternative cause to the concrete universal outside of its relationship with the universal imaginary within the ontological parallax; poverty is not caused by the wealth produced in the global economy, but rather an effect of a variety of external antagonisms. As has been noted, the accuracy of these antagonisms is often unimportant. While deeming Third World workers to be ‘ignorant’ or uneducated seems overwhelmingly unfair, in terms of the maintenance of the fantasmatic supplement supporting the abstract universal, it has the same effect as Sach’s poverty trap. Both these modes of antagonism mediate between the subject and the true horror of absolute poverty; they alleviate responsibility from the capitalist subject.
The positing of antagonisms is a core element of ideological fantasy; it removes the Real effect from the symptom. Contemporary hegemonic discourses on poverty have rotated around the fantasmatic construction of poverty, which domesticates its dislocating potential. Indeed, the very construction of the United Nations MDGs is a domestication of the Real in poverty. The symptom exists both as the Real, in that it represents the failure of the abstract universal via the presence of the parallax gap and also as a symbolic entity. The effect of naming the symptom largely domesticates the presence of the Real, although an excess still remains. This is the case with the Millennium Development Goals. Through the construction of poverty in this manner (the elimination of poverty is one of the central goals), the symptom enters into the discourse, and unconscious supplement, of the authority of the United Nations. Therefore the symptom no longer presses on the abstract universal; it has been domesticated by entering into the fantasmatic core of the United Nations. In terms of the construction of poverty, the act of symbolising poverty removes poverty from view. It is no longer a Real force threatening the universal horizon, but rather part of the existing symbolic framework. It is for this reason that governments can appear so eager to establish frameworks like the MDGs, but have no motivation to carry them out. This effect allows poverty to be continually disavowed; the idea of fixing the symptom is sufficient to achieve the domestication of the symptom.
7.4.ii Super-ego
Conversely, this domestication is never complete. Once the symptom enters into the discursive arena, either as a symbolic entity or as an effect of the Real, any symbolisation leaves an excess. This excess can be dealt with through one of three separate strategies. The first has already been outlined external antagonisms. The failure of something like the MDG’s can be explained by citing antagonisms, like the failure of western governments to comply, or the mismanagement of funds by nations receiving the assistance. The second has also been noted, the disavowal of the symptom. We shall further expand on these discursive strategies shortly. However, perhaps the most common discursive method for dealing with the excess in the symptom of poverty is super-ego demand. The construction of poverty is a super-ego construction; we ‘ought’ to do something about poverty (Sachs, 2005; Shirley, 2005). As such super-ego demand pervades most discourses on poverty and has led to the establishment of strong super-ego discourses, such as those of charities like World Vision.
The super-ego establishes guilt in the subject about the failure of the symbolic fabric. This guilt presses the subject to act upon the content of the failure. However, such an action does not remove the effect of the super-ego. Instead, the more the subject submits, the guiltier they feel. This is the main appeal of charitable organisations that operate around poverty. Organisations like World Vision or Tear Fund use images of malnourished small children and slogans such as “A child is waiting” (World Vision: A Child is Waiting, 2006). As has been previously detailed, super-ego demand is not an effective strategy for achieving change. Rather, it leaves the existing fantasmatic core intact, although it may make some small changes along the way. Normally, the subject seeks to find a way out of the super-ego cycle. Often the mediating affect of paying money, like in the sponsorship of a third-world child, allows the subject to divorce themselves of the responsibility for poverty and into an ideological edifice, such as the MDG’s, or into a state of disavowal.
The Make Poverty History campaign appears to have been aware of this effect. Rather than ask for donations, the campaign instead posited demands that could not be solved by the individual. At the same time it developed the dislocatory effect of the symptom. This strategy had the effect of not enabling the subject to have any easy way out of the super-ego cycle. Additionally, white wrist bands were sold and worn as a constant reminder of the super-ego demand of poverty. The suggested way out of this cycle was for citzens to demand that their governments do something about the conditions of poverty. Unfortunately, while this demand did occur, governments have been able to domesticate the dislocatory pressure by simply promising to do something.
This kind of super-ego demand has an additionally harmful effect. Instead of placing poverty in its properly political realm, charitable organisations and campaigns tend to present poverty as a humanitarian problem, a failure of human rights rather than political economy. This discursive positioning takes away the responsibility from both the subject and the capitalist mode of production (Žižek, 2005). Therefore poverty as a humanitarian project, as it is presented by Sachs, again reveals the parallax that is in operation. The demand of the super-ego is not linked to reducing our wealth, or radically altering our economic system, but rather of providing funding and support for “On-the-ground solutions for ending poverty” (Sachs, 2005,p.226-243).
7.4.iii Disavowal
The final discursive strategy for acknowledging, but domesticating the symptom has already been covered within this chapter; disavowal. However, we shall briefly return to it because of its importance in the operation of poverty discourse. What allows the disavowal of poverty to operate so effectively - that is, the acknowledgement of the existence of poverty, but a general ignorance towards it - are two separate factors. The first, which has already been discussed, is that poverty, as a symptom, does not regularly impact on the abstract universal imaginary of capital. It is nowhere near as all-pervading as symptoms like climate change.
The second reason was also in operation in Green ideology; commodity fetishism. In commodity fetishism, a commodity stands in for objet a, as the fantasised object to fulfill the lack in the Other. Simply put, the subject receives too much jouissance from the fetishised commodity involved in consumption to be dislocated by poverty. They may know very well that the clothing being purchased was made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, a fact to which the subject may be personally opposed. However, the jouissance involved in the consumption is too strong for the former ideal to become a salient factor. Conversely, there is often an excess involved in consumption, in that the symptom is never completely pacified. This excess has generated new initiatives, such as the growing popularity of ‘ethical’ or ‘fair-trade’ consumption. In most cases though, the fetishising of commodities through consumption based capitalism is too strong for the existence of poverty to have a dislocating effect on the western world as it currently stands. However, there are still possible opportunities for dislocation that exist through discourses of poverty. It is these possibilities which we shall now focus on.
7. 5 Discourses of the Symptom
The shift from discourses which acknowledge the symptom to discourses of the symptom, is accomplished via a short-circuit discursive reading. Through the short-circuit analysis, both sides of the parallax view become visible. Rather than constructing the symptom as a failure of the universal, in the short-circuit view the symptom becomes constitutive; evidence of the concrete universal and the parallax gap. However, the vital difference is not interpretative. Rather it comes from the detachment of the symptom from the fantasmatic jouissance in which it was previously constructed. Therefore, the short-circuit reading achieves a Žižekian ‘traversal of the fantasy’. The displacement of fantasy allows a reconstruction of the status of the symptom, a very powerful force for socio-political analysis. However, as has been noted previously, discourses of the symptom have a limited dislocatory effect as they are still articulated within the terms of the universal horizon, therefore they have only a partial Real effect. Conversely, by opening up a gap within the abstract universal, by denying the suture of the parallax view, discourses of the symptom become part of a strong dislocatory effect when combined with the concrete universal itself.
As with Green ideology, discourses of the symptom have to be carefully distinguished from external discourses. External discourses are outside of the parallax view and the moment of universality. As such they offer little prospect of producing radical change, but more of a chance of sedimenting the hegemonic universal imaginary. This sedimentation occurs because, as Laclau contends, discourses establish limits by excluding a radical otherness. Laclau terms this exclusion the ‘constitutive outside’, because it is only the definition of the outside which allows the formulation of an interior. In discourses of poverty, we see this operation between forms of Islam and the capitalist West, particularly the United States. Militant Islam groups, such as Al-Qaeda often attract the poor and powerless, although they are often controlled by a rich elite. Militant Islam gives the powerless an identity via an antagonism; the capitalist West. This strategy, although often damaging to capitalist interests, is very unlikely to cause the downfall of capitalism. As we have seen with the actions of the Bush administration of the United States, militant Islam has only entrenched the fantasmatic core of capitalism, resulting in military conflict.
Instead, discourses of the symptom challenge the unconscious fantasmatic support of the unconscious universal. In terms of poverty, Marxism is the discourse which presently fills this role. Marxism, as has been noted previously, has moved from a discourse of the concrete universal (to which we shall soon turn) to a discourse of the symptom. Where Marxism was once a discourse of the proletariat, it has increasingly become a dissident voice distant from the now global working class. This is not to suggest that Marxism only recognises the workers of the western world. Rather, as a discourse of the symptom, Marxist discourse is often able to view capitalism awry, taking in both the global capitalism and the poverty it produces. Indeed, many Marxists, such as Samir Amin declare the western workers and unions are the enemies of the global proletariat both because they draw attention away from global poverty and because they have implicitly submitted to the capitalist system.
By being able to conceptualise the parallax gap, discourses of the symptom like Marxism have a unique, but productive role. This role involves attempting to deconstruct the universal horizon by displacing the symptom from its fantasmatic bonds. To accomplish this task, Marxism does not have to take on a positive imaginary such as the fantasmatic postulating of an alternative economic system. Rather, its role is to play on the symptom, revealing the excess in the universalist fantasy. By doing so, it is theorized that a space can be opened up within the universal imaginary that can be exploited by a discourse of the concrete universal. This has proved, however, to be a particularly difficult task, such is the fantasmatic closure inherent in global capital. It is difficult, if not impossible, to find an example of this kind of discursive strategy in mainstream media, although these discourses do exist in the academic world (see Arn, 1994; Limqueco & McFarlane, 1983). Often Marxism falls victim to the same parallax as capitalist discourse, focusing only on exploitation within economic relations in the Third World (Ercel, 2006). However, this is the task to which Marxism must apply itself to help achieve a radical structural global economic shift.
7.6 Discourses of the Concrete Universal
In the case of poverty, discourses of the concrete universal are generated in the terms of those experiencing poverty. On the other hand, these discourses are not limited to the concrete universal side of the parallax. That is, they are not constructed purely in terms of the experience of poverty, such as the Voices of the Poor series produced by the World Bank. Rather, as in all concrete universals, these discourses take on the singular exception to the universal horizon, absolute poverty, yet exceed the existing hegemonic imaginary. By doing so absolute poverty is not presented as a singular experience, but rather as a constitutive feature of capitalism. As has been detailed previously, the relationship between the abstract universal and the concrete universal is an impossible one; there are no terms available to establish a link. Therefore the presence of the concrete universal in the abstract universal produces a radical dislocation of the hegemonic imaginary. Capitalism, for example, is constructed around a fundamental horizon of justice in the production of wealth through the invisible hand that guides the market. There is no room for exploitation or constitutive poverty, at least in the abstracted capitalist imaginary. Therefore the impossible combination of the concrete universal of absolute poverty with the capitalist imaginary should bring a dislocation of the latter.
But what are the possibilities for achieving this task via poverty? The primary advantage (in terms of discursive strategy) that poverty has over climate change is that in poverty the concrete universal can become a discursive force. The concrete universal still remains a Real element because of the parallax gap. The parallax gap prevents a translation of terms between the abstract and concrete universal. Because of this gap, the concrete universal goes unsymbolised amongst the hegemonic; it is the impossible Real. From the alternative perspective, however, the Real is symbolised. The advantage here is that the concrete universal can be controlled; it can reproduce various discursive strategies. In contrast, the natural, as the concrete universal within Green ideology, operates largely outside of the direct control of human symbolic intervention.
The potential therefore exists for a movement from the concrete universal. Such a movement would involve the people of poverty, disavowed by capital, coming together under a united discourse. We can perhaps see this process in the use of the term ‘Majority World’ rather than Third World, to refer the idea that those in poverty are not simply an excess of capitalism, but rather constitutive the core population of the world. The key is the form of this unity. It is not effective if the discourse becomes an alternative imaginary to the hegemonic horizon. This - Laclauian inspired - strategy risks becoming an external discourse, a constitute outside rather than concrete universal. Alternatively, the discourse could fight a ‘war of position’ for the empty signifier which attempts to suture the parallax gap. Examples of these empty signifiers include ‘development’ and ‘progress’.
Conversely, such a strategy is likely to simply be pacified by the dominant discourse because it enters, but does not disturb, the unconscious supplement of the abstract universal. Rather, the key position is the presentation of the unity of poverty as a concrete universal; that is, as the constitutive exception of capitalism, a necessary requirement. This is not to suggest that this concrete universal holds a better normative or economic position that capitalism, but it holds a high possibility of dislocating capital, provided that it is able to place enough pressure on the fantasmatic unconscious supplement that supports the capitalist imaginary. The central message here is to practice concrete universality; to evoke the anxiety that is caused by exposing that which is necessarily disavowed for the continued functioning of the universal horizon. We shall now turn to the concluding chapter of this thesis, which examines the possibilities for practicing concrete universality, particularly in regard to global capital. In addition, the viability of this strategy (as well as the methodological approach to understanding the symptom) as a political method is discussed in detail.
6. Green Ideology
The following two chapters seek to further develop the dialectical materialist methodological position created in Chapter 5 through its application to two areas of capitalist discourse. These discursive formations, Green ideology and global poverty, represent two of the most pressing issues facing humanity. By applying the methodology created in thesis, a method which acts as a political approach in itself, it is hoped that further insight can be gathered into the viability of this political method, in particular the attempt to practice concrete universality. The initial focus of the discursive analysis is an examination of the defence mechanisms used towards symptoms within the universal horizon. Secondly, the chapters examine the possibilities for dislocating these defence mechanisms and moving beyond the abstract universal imaginary and its unconscious supplement by exposing the exclusion upon which it is based; the concrete universal.
In this chapter we shall first set the theoretical context for this methodological application to Green ideology, both in terms of the development of Green ideology and the specific application of dialectical materialism to Green ideology, specifically the modalities of parallaxes and the Real that are in operation. Following this task, we will move onto the particular defence mechanisms orientated towards symptoms within discourses in Green ideology. Finally, the potential for disrupting capitalism via the symptom is considered. It is found that although the environment is an element that constantly threatens to dislocate capitalism, it is difficult to harness this power in a pro-active manner; that is, without waiting for an ecological collapse. In terms of the method created in the previous chapter and its political implications, Green Ideology exemplifies the efficiency of discursive defence mechanisms in domesticating the dislocating effect of the symptom. Conversely, the importance of the concrete universal - as the impossible element which always returns - is highlighted; hence the political potency of practicing the concrete universal.
6.1 Development of Green Ideology
Since the latter half of the 20th century, various terms have been used to refer to Green ideology. Environmentalism and ecologism are two terms that are often used interchangeably within Green discourse; however, for the purposes of this thesis, a subtle distinction lies between them. Environmentalism is thought to relate more to reformist, particular Green discourses, whereas ecologism takes a stronger, often ecocentric stand (Heywood, 1998,p.264; Smith, 1998,p.66). In this chapter when referring the total field of thought relating to the environment, the term ‘Green’ will be used, whereas ‘environmentalism’ and ‘ecologism’ will be reserved for their respective particular discourses.
A further differentiation, more specific to this thesis, is required between the terms ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’. This distinction owes a lot to the work of Yannis Stavrakakis, particularly his contrast between politics and the political (Stavrakakis, 1999,p.71). Nature is a construction of reality, through the symbolic and its fantasmatic support. Nature, however, cannot exhaust the natural. As such it resembles the relationship between reality and the Real. In terms of Green ideology, the basic parallax of ontological difference lies in the incommensurability between nature and the natural. In this definition, nature is the abstract universal. It refers to the hegemonic conception of the ‘natural’ within any given discourse. In contrast, the natural is the really existing hard material/biological core to nature. It is the trees, seas and genes; the total material entity outside of language. In terms of ontological difference, the natural is the concrete universal. The concrete universal of the natural exceeds that of the universal horizon of nature, yet encompasses its concrete singular exception in that it is only when the abstract universal fails, as revealed in the symptom, that the natural is revealed.
As in any parallax, there is an incommensurable split in operation. What is specific about this parallax for Green ideology is the relationship between the abstract and concrete universal. Rather than the concrete universal operating only as the disavowed foundation of the abstract universal, its minimal difference within itself, the concrete universal in this circumstance is what the abstract universal seeks to represent. The twist, however, is that in seeking to represent the concrete universal, the abstract represses the essential impossibility of this representation; that nature is not the natural - this repression is similar to the fundamental fantasy which represses the act of castration. Therefore, a minimal difference still operates between nature and the natural. This minimal difference is a modality of the Real because of the incommensurable gap introduced within the moment of universality. Further to this, not only does the Real operate as the parallax Real via the incommensurable gap between the abstract and concrete modalities of the universal, but also through the concrete universal as a force in itself; the natural.
As well as the parallax of ontological difference, a second parallax is in operation within Green ideology; the political parallax. Political parallaxes occur, similar to the parallax of ontological difference, when there is no common ground between two perspectives. However, rather than this incommensurability occurring as an internal difference, the parallax occurs between two competing positions. These positions are separated by a fundamental social antagonism, which introduces a parallax gap; the parallax Real. In Green ideology the parallax Real occurs because of the social antagonism caused by global capital. This social antagonism separates perspectives which are dominated by the hegemony of global capital and those which are structured only according to environmental concern. Once again, a symptom of the parallax occurs where the gap (social antagonism) reveals itself. In the case of the political parallax, symptoms can occur on both sides of the parallax.
This political parallax has occurred because capital is also the symbolic Real (Žižek, 2002, p.xii), it has hegemonised the ground upon which discourses of nature are constructed. This does not mean that capital is the Real in the sense that it is an impossiblity or absence, rather it is that which always returns to its place; it forms the background against which all other discourses relate back to; capital has hegemonised hegemony (Žižek, 2000a, p.223; 2000b ,p.319). The symbolic Real has much in common with Fink’s conception of R2, the Real after the letter (as I have developed in Chapter 2). Capital, as the symbolic Real produces a limit within the discursive realm. Any discourse that clashes with a discourse of capital creates a social antagonism, a split within the discourse. Social antagonisms reveal themselves through symptoms which reveal the incommensurability of discourses split by a social antagonism. As we shall latter develop, this occurs most prominently in discourses from the Green Party of New Zealand. This chapter reviews several different Green discourses which form part of the Green ideology, considering the operation of both the parallaxes of ontological difference and the political parallax, as well as the resulting modalities of the Real and their symptoms through the methodology described in Chapter Five and the unique application of these categories are depicted in the introduction to this chapter. Examples of these discourses are taken from New Zealand politics which, while not exhaustive of Green ideology, give an adequate guide.
It is theorised that each discourse is dealing with a primary dislocation, that of the Green critique of industrialism and also the universal hegemonic power of the capitalist economy. Capital provides a fundamental limit to each of the discourses, a Real limit that produces a deadlock around which a plurality of discourses rotates, as well as the displacement of the effect of the Real to various external antagonisms. There are possibilities of radical economic change through the constant dislocation of industrialism and capital through the natural. On the other hand, these dislocations and the symptoms they produce are well domesticated by discourses that cannot move beyond the limit imposed by capital. Therefore only a radical, natural dislocation provides a possibility of change. This work relies predominately on the theory of Laclau and Žižek, however, the analysis of Green discourses by Yannis Stavrakakis, John Dryzek and Toby Smith are also heavily drawn on.
The first prominent dislocations in our construction of the natural began in the later 20th century. A concern with the environment began to develop into a discourse of its own in the 1960’s, along with a host of other changes in social politics at the time, including anti-racism, feminism and the peace movement. Indeed, Dryzek suggests that a concept of the ‘environment’ did not exist until the 1960’s (Dryzek, 2005, p.5). Environmentalism/ecologism did not, however, become a strong force until the 1970’s, when a radical environmental movement developed, part of which was a damming critique of capitalism (Hansen, 1991, p.444). Around this time Green political parties were also established, such as the Values Party in New Zealand, which first formed in 1972 (Dryzek, 2005, p.203).
In New Zealand the environmental movement only captured the attention of the masses when it began to threaten the national identity, or ‘Thing’ in a Lacanian sense. The first risings in the 1970’s were based around protests against the Manapouri dam and then nuclear issues in the pacific. The environmental movement was institutionalised by the state with the anti-nuclear ban of 1985 following various other moves in the 1970’s, particularly by Kirk’s 3rd Labour government. The environmental movement gained a lot of traction from a nationalistic jouissance because New Zealanders believed that their ‘Thing’ was being threatened, either by development, as in the Manapouri dam, or foreigners in the French nuclear tests. Environmentalism has become a part of the New Zealand identity and an increasingly central element in New Zealand politics. For example, National has formed a group within its party called the ‘Blue Greens’ and United Future call themselves the ‘common sense Greens’(United Future, 2005). The ACT party is also getting in on the ‘Green’ message. This spread of environmental politics is mirrored in western nations around the world, with the current notable exception of the United States.
The rapid progression of environment discourse has been a response to symptoms (of the ontological parallax between nature and the natural) emerging of the universal conception of the environment. These symptoms were unable to be pacified within the discursive/fantasmatic resources available and thus produced a plurality of discourses which sought to tame and understand them. The domestication of symptoms is not an arbitrary process, rather, as Stavrakakis states; “the direction of the response (to dislocation) depends on the course of action which seems to be more capable of neutralising the terrorising presence of the impossible Real” (Stavrakakis, 2000, p.109). There are numerous different discursive positions which have battled to provide a domesticating hegemony to Green Ideology by coming to grips with the Real which has provoked a partial dislocation in industrial discourse. This partial dislocation has meant that Green ideology has become more common place, attempting to deal with the threat to the capitalist imaginary produced by climate change. As such, Stavrakakis states;
Increasing numbers of people look for a solution to problems such as unemployment and economic deterioration in Green ideology…If today people are increasing looking to Green ideology in order to solve these problems this means that previously hegemonic identifications have been dislocated (p.111).
6.2 The Symptom; Survivalism
Symptoms within Green ideology come in several different forms. They can be symptoms of the ontological parallax, such as climate change or in the instance of political parallax, the failure of carbon taxes. The initial dislocating symptom of Green ideology was the discourse of Survivalism (Dryzek, 2005). Survivalism was a discursive representation of the growing realisation that humanity’s conception of nature was radically out of balance with the natural. The discursive representation of this symptom did not fully domesticate its Real effect. Although the symptom is symbolised, it is not within the terms of the abstract universal, or in terms that could be reconstructed within the universal horizon. Therefore Survivalism still maintained its dislocatory threat.
Survivalism, first constituted through a report by the Club of Rome in 1972, is based on the belief that industrial production and economic growth is pushing the earth towards or, perhaps past, its carry capacity; the maximum supportable resource use in an ecosystem before its collapse (Dryzek, 2005, p.27). Survivalism is the discourse which first established Green ideology as a political force, although it never fully instituted itself as a positive movement, rather as a threat to the universal imaginary. This was a role that it played particularly successfully, based on a fundamental belief in the finite resource limits of the planet. As such Survivalism became the symptom of industrialism and looked likely to threaten the universal status of industrialism, in both its capitalist and communist forms.
Survivalism rejected the capacity of new technologies to expand resource limits, suggesting that technological advancement simply slowed resource depletion; inadequate when exponential system growth is occurring, such as in human population. The danger of exponential growth is signified by the ‘29th day’ metaphor, a common survivalist image. This metaphor makes a comparison between lilies in a pond and the carrying capacity of the Earth. It asks which day a pond would be half full if the number of Lilies doubles each day and the pond is full on the 30th. The answer is of course the 29th day, on which it would appear that there is plenty of room for expansion. This kind of imagery proved an enormous threat to the hegemonic system of production. However, the advent of Green ideology has not meant a full dislocation of capitalism or of the industrial ethos. Instead, a number of different discursive strategies have been used to domesticate this symptom. It is to these discursive strategies that we now turn.
6.3 Discursive strategies; Repression
The parallax between nature and the natural means that a degree of dislocation of any discourse of nature is inevitable. When that discourse is a capitalist conception of nature, the dislocation is likely to be even stronger because of the drive towards greater exploitation of natural resources. Because of this dislocation, the symptoms of nature are difficult to repress. The closest discourse of Green ideology to the discursive strategy of Repression is Promethean discourse (Dryzek, 2005). Promethean discourse was the initial response to Survivalism; it repressed the symptomatic discourse of Survivalism. The repression, a restoration of original identity provided a form of jouissance because it offered the prospect of quilting the void opened up by Survivalism. The basic premise of Promethean discourse is that humankind has ultimate control of the environment and it is thus able to push the limit of global carrying capacity indefinitely. This is based on free-market economic arguments that suggest that price is the ultimate measure of scarcity; as resources become scarcer, prices will increase producing conservation efforts and a search for substitutes. In order to develop and have access to this technology, societies need to be wealthy. Therefore the key to environmental health is economic wealth.
Promethean discourse is illustrated in the following excerpt from a speech by the leader of the New Zealand ACT Party, Rodney Hide;
(R)esources aren't defined physically but by science and technology combined with our ability to organise and to make use of them. That’s why the human race continues to flourish and prosper 30 years after the environmental doomsday books so terrifyingly predicted our imminent demise. We didn't run out of resources for a very simple reason: we can expand our knowledge and thereby expand our resource base. We now have more resources than ever before. We will have even more tomorrow
I did travel to countries that had run out of everything. These were the eastern bloc countries. Their problem wasn't the physical limits of their resource base but their failed economic system. That's the other problem with the doomsday books. They said a lot about ecology, systems and feedback loops, but ignored, first, the economic system within which natural resources are defined and used and, second, the feedback loop that prices provide. The failure was fatal to the models' predictive power. If something gets scarce, its price goes up, spurring conservation, the search for more supplies and discovery of alternatives (Hide, 2005).
A fine line exists between Hide’s position and the acknowledgement of the symptom. As the discrepancy between nature and the natural starts to reveal itself, it gets more difficult to repress symptoms. Here lies the correlation between acknowledgement and repression. Promethean discourse remains within a repressive operation in that it refuses to acknowledge the symptom, but at the same time acknowledges the symptom sufficiently enough to state the technology will solve the problem; that it is just a temporary blip in the market - if it was really a issue, prices would go up to fix the problem. Indeed, as has been previously noted, these failures are necessary for the continued functioning of the abstract universal. Promethean discourse required the occurrence or even production of failure to be posited in fantasy as contingent or external failures. The minimal acknowledgement of the symptom, within the confines of fantasy, provides this failure.
Conversely, the threat of environment collapse has not simply dissipated with Promethean discourse. It constantly impacts on the social order, such is the impact of the symptom as an excess to the system. Now, although humanity is still threatened by environmental dislocation, which as Žižek shows is one of the modalities in which we regularly meet the Real (Žižek, 1999,p.4), this threat is increasingly particularised and dealt with within a plurality of other discourses around this fundamental blockage; the parallax relationship between economic growth and environmental limits. The symptom continues to impact and thus the Promethean discourse ultimately failed because although it fits in well with the ideological fantasy of economic growth, it failed to adequately domesticate its symptom, the continued failure of nature to represent the natural.
6.4 Acknowledgement of the symptom
The failure of Promethean discourse produced a range of new discursive perspectives that acknowledged the presence of the symptom - environmental limits/climate change- yet domesticated its effects. In terms of the political parallax of Green ideology, these hegemonic discourses operate firmly on the side of global capital. They function through the ideology/fantasy of science and the market, as well as super-ego demand through Green consumerism and ‘clean, green living’. As well as these mechanisms, there is a large degree of fetishism - environmental limits are disavowed at the expense of the consumption of commodities. Disavowal/fetishism is the most powerful force and currently the strongest defence mechanism against symptoms within Green ideology.
6.4.i Ideology
One of the strongest defence mechanisms used against the symptom in Green ideology are the discourses of ‘problem-solving’. These discourses represent the ultimate ideological position in claiming that they are outside of ideology and are taking a neutral perspective. Problem solving discourses, such as Democratic Pragmatism, Administrative and Economic Rationalism take the status quo as given and do not debate the issue of environmental limits which was at the centre of the Survivalist/Promethean division. Instead, problem-solving discourses reject any call to ‘ideology’ and rather focus on pure ‘scientific’ evidence. New Zealand environmental politics rotate between these three types of problem-solving discourses. The Green Party does enter further into the more radical sustainability discourses, but increasingly is looking to democratic participation and economic instruments. By taking the capitalist status quo as a given, problem solving discourses are able to supplement the universal appeal of capital whilst somewhat dealing with the symptom of environmental change, either through domestication through particularism e.g. no real change or sacrifice is required, just good management, or through the positing of an external antagonism (often Green Radicalism); “we are not captured by the extremist fringe of the environmental movement or it’s ideology” (NZ First, 2005a).
Some parties, such as New Zealand First, take a purely economic line; one of New Zealand First’s 15 fundamental principles is; “Wise governments view the preservation and enhancement of the environment as sound economics. All environmental policies will be proactive with a view to creating employment and sustainable wealth whilst improving one of our few competitive advantages” (NZ First, 2005b). Likewise, David Benson-Pope, the former Government Minister for the Environment states; “While there are challenges ahead to maintain economic growth without damaging the environment or quality of life, I’m determined to face up to these challenges - there is no alternative” (Benson-Pope, 2006).
6.4.ii Fetishism and Disavowal
Perhaps the most powerful discourse in terms of protecting a universal horizon against the symptom is disavowal, often combined with fetishism. The Economic Rationalist discourse is a powerful one because it is able to particularise the environmental threat by maintaining the stance that a radical change is not required. Although this discourse does not deny the existence of the symptom, it offers an easy solution, obtainable without sacrifice; indeed through the jouissance of consumption. Within Green ideology, Economic Rationalist discourse takes this position. Economic Rationalism is very similar to the Promethean discourse; it includes much the same actors and assumptions, but makes more of an effort to account for environmental threat. Economic Rationalism is almost a sequel to Promethean discourse. Instead of simply letting the market take care of the environment, Economic Rationalist discourse seeks to establish markets where they did not exist previously, such as for water or pollution. Carbon trading and the Kyoto agreement are examples of the new establishment of markets. At its most radical Economic Rationalism enters into a certain restructuring of the capitalist economy, similar to the discourse of Ecological Modernism. The former discourse is most readily associated with the political and economic Right, but increasingly even social democratic political parties and discourses are seeking to ‘harness the power of the market’. The Green party utilises these kind of movements, seeking to ‘Naturalise’ capitalism (GreenParty, 2005a, 2005d, 2005e), such is the impotence of the ecological side of the political parallax.
Economic Rationalism operates as a disavowal in that it acknowledges the presence of climate change and environmental limits as symptoms, yet continues to operate as if they did not exist by progressing on with, indeed strengthening, the very measures that created these conditions. Like most disavowals, the mechanism that allows this paradoxical operation is a fetish. In this case the fetish comes from consumption, as we shall also later develop in relation to the super-ego. In the case of fetishism and disavowals, the subject acknowledges, often only unconsciously, that consumption and the free-market are destroying the environment, yet refuses to give up the jouissance they obtain through consumption. This jouissance makes this fetish very difficult to break down. Indeed it is the jouissance received from consumption and ‘our (western) way of life’ that creates the social antagonism between global capital and environmental limits seen in the political parallax.
6.4.iii Super-ego demand, ideological fantasy and the Empty Signifier
Green discourses which have operated through ideological fantasy, such as the problem-solving discourses, or through fetishism, however, have not been able to fully integrate the symptom within their universal horizon. Instead, as is the inherent condition of the nature/natural ontological parallax, the symptom continues to operate as an excessive element within the discourse. Therefore, a new breed of discourse has been generated. These discourses take on a super-ego demand, in that the discourse suggests that the subject ‘ought’ to conserve the environment. ‘Sustainability’, predominately the discourses of Ecological Modernism and Sustainable Development, as well as Green consumerism, are the stable discourses of this method. As well as this, empty signifiers are frequently used to give name to the subversion of the staging of absence via the Kantian transcendental illusion (Žižek, 2006a, p.18). This naming allows the illusion that there is something which exists in the gap between the two elements of the political parallax.
Sustainability discourses do not seek to bring down capitalism, but rather to strengthen its hegemony; they attempt to suture the political parallax by privileging capital over the environment. They implicitly and explicitly accept that capitalism is the ‘only game in town’ and therefore ecological movements have no option but to seek to make it profitable for capital to be ‘Green’. To do so would be to dissolve the social antagonism that constructs the parallax; there is no antagonism because ecologicalism fully accepts the legitimate hegemony of capital. This involves some restructuring of capital, but mostly in the name of capital, not the environment. However, although these discourses seek to 'Green' capitalism, all they end up achieving is a pacification of the ecological symptom and a market advantage, playing to the super-ego demand of the consumer, which is what we see in the Green consumerist movement. These include ‘Green’ shopping that plays at super-ego demand, such as re-usable shopping bags (Hickman, 2006). An interesting alternative to the super-ego approach is provided by the Conservation Fund and their Carbon Zero Calculator. Here the consumer is able to approximate their carbon footprint and then ‘Go Zero’ by making a donation towards the planting of native trees to balance out your production of carbon. I could remove my guilt, pollute all I want and ‘Go Zero’ for US$35.50! (The Conservation Fund, 2006).
Green consumerism is one of the strongest Green discourses because its erases our doubts about the feasibility of consumption (over-consumption being suggested as a symptom of capital), suggesting that we can continue consuming at the same rate, as long as we do it in a more efficient and ecologically sensitive manner (Smith, 1998, p.88). Green consumerism also hooks into the very seductive ideological jouissance of the act of consumption itself. However, the duel operation of super-ego and consumption can produce a paradox of increased consumption. With Green consumption, the more one conforms, the guiltier one feels. Added to Green consumption as a modality of the super-ego, we have the paradoxical situation that Green consumption can lead to more consumption; that Green consumption could mean limiting consumption does not fit the co-ordinates of the capitalist matrix, nor the demands of the super-ego. Therefore, although Green consumerism cannot be dismissed outright - undoubtedly it is better for the environment to buy recycled toilet paper than regular - the obscene underside of this action is that it domesticates the environmental symptom. It reduces the environmental problem to an individual one, rather than a constitutive structural fault and suggests that through small actions the problem can be solved. Ultimately then, Green Consumerism cannot be viewed in a positive manner.
6.4.iv The Political Parallax; Empty signifiers
In taking on all these demands, the term ‘Sustainable Development’ becomes an empty signifier in the Laclauian sense; it is filled with meaning by discourses that achieve hegemony. More than this, it allows for the temporary production of a transcendental illusion. The transcendental illusion suggests that something exists in the place of nothing; in the gap between the two mutually exclusive perspectives of the political parallax. The empty signifier, by giving a name to this parallax gap, suggests the possibility its filling. The possibility of such a suture produces jouissance. The use of the empty signifier ‘Sustainable Development’ is vital to the smooth operation of any political formation functioning within Green ideology. Sustainable development seeks to avoid the pitfalls of the political parallax between development and environmental degradation. However, the use of Sustainable Development as a suturing tool does not in any way suggest that it is a middle or neutral point between the discourses. Rather, empty signifiers are hegemonised by the dominant side of the parallax - in this case, capital. Thus, while Green parties and movements may insist on the value of being ‘Sustainable’, the term is being appropriated by capital to mean sustainable growth, which may or may nor have an environmental edge. Thus its very emptiness gives ‘Sustainable Development’ it’s value; it can be taken on by many discourses without compromise, most notably capital.
Capital, however, provides the limit for sustainable development discourses; this limit is the parallax gap. The parallax gap is revealed in the symptoms of sustainability, such as the rejection of Green taxes in New Zealand, such as the now infamous ‘Fart Tax’, as well as the ‘Carbon Tax’. The symptoms of the parallax reveal themselves where the subordinate discourse attempts to push beyond the limits set for it by the hegemonic horizon. This has been the case in Green ideology when moves by ecological discourses begin to threaten capital. These moves are rejected through the threat of ‘disinvestment’ from capital. The disinvestment threat is not direct, but it is real. Governments in liberal-capitalist democracies stand or fall on their abilities to increase and maintain economic growth. Any discursive move and policy that may directly threaten the interests of capital is immediately written off as a threat to economic growth and rejected. Efforts to move environmental protection along market lines have been rejected because of their costs to capital; in stark contrast to the ease at which market measures had been taken on in Health and Education.
Although the Green Party Charter states what appears to be an anti-capitalist manifesto; “Unlimited material growth is impossible. Therefore the key to social responsibility is the just distribution of social and natural resources, both locally and globally” (GreenParty, 2005c)The Green Party are forced to re-interpret ‘Sustainable’ in a capitalistic manner, in the naïve hope that they can manipulate its meaning beyond the currently hegemony of the business world. For example, in the initial issue of the Green’s business publication ‘The Real Bottom Line’, co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons suggests that sustainable business is about “Future-proofing the New Zealand Economy”(Fitzsimons, 2006c). Similarly, in an article entitled ‘More Power to Consumers’ Fitzsimons advocates for more information for consumers to make better choices about their choice of energy supplier (Fitzsimons, 2006b). The Green Party are thus politically limited because they know it is electoral suicide to take on a position that may evoke ‘disinvestment’ threats. Other political parties in New Zealand are also aware of the power of this threat, accusing the Green Party of being ‘Watermelons’; green on the outside, red in the middle (Baldock, 2005; Hide, 2005).
6.5 External discourses- The flip-side of the political parallax
On the other side of the political parallax that operates within Green ideology lay those discourses which are excluded from the dominant terms of the debate; those that do not fit with the limits set by global capital. Green radicalism is by far the most common of these possibilities. Of all the Green discourses that have been analysed in this chapter, it is only Green Radicalism that is not totally anthropocentric. There are anthropocentric elements in Green Radicalism, but a large element of this discourse focuses on the principally excluded ecocentric component of Green ideology. The predominance of ecocentricism within Green radicalism reveals the incommensurability between it and capital; there simply is no common ground.
Discourses such as Green radicalism appear to be a threat to capital because they operate outside its hegemonic domain, however, it is precisely this latter fact that prevents Green Radicalism from becoming a threat. In the parallax of ontological difference the concrete universal is strictly internal to the abstract. In contrast, in the political parallax the excluded Other appears more like Laclau’s constitutive outside; it has no common link with the dominant paradigm, the only link is through exclusion via a core social antagonism. While this exclusion does give stability to the dominant position by allowing the establishment of limits, at the same time it does not act as a threat in the same manner as the concrete universal. The only threat comes in the possibility of revealing the limits of the hegemonic discourse and thus the contingency of its construction.
Green Radicalism is also a fatally flawed discourse in itself, although in a different manner from other Green discourses. Green Radicalism is very essentialist and totalitarian; it is just another, more radical attempt to deal with the symptoms of the parallax between nature and the natural. Radical Green discourse seeks to find a fundamental and essential unity between its elements, based on a ‘natural’ bio-centric harmony between man and nature. Paradoxically, ecocentricism can only be expressed anthropocentrically through language. Like any essentialist discourse, when the inherent impossibility of its construction is exposed, this dislocation is dangerously displaced onto an external antagonism; in the case of radical Green thought, capitalism is one of those antagonisms posited as responsible for the failure of the natural. While the positioning of capital as an antagonism may at first glance appear subversive, in the case of Green Radicalism, it is another example of a fantasmatic operation. As such, radical Green thought is unlikely to present a major threat to capital; its more likely role is to set the very boundaries of capitalism.
It is possible, as Smith (1998, p.163) suggests, that Green Radicalism could make more of an impact if it focused more on the role of culture, fighting for the meanings of terms and the hegemonic re-occupation of terms that originated from the Green movement, such as sustainability, rather than leaving it to capital and those who are prepared to compromise with capital. This is a Laclauian approach. Laclau argues that the role of the excluded terms of the parallax (although Laclau himself does not use the notion of a parallax), such as Green Radicalism, is to form a unity of sorts and attempt to fill the empty signifier which covers the parallax gap with meaning. What this approach ignores, however, is the limits set by capital; capital as the Real in the symbolic sense and in terms of a social antagonism, but also capital as the jouissance that maintains the fantasy which supports capital.
Therefore, the battle over an empty signifier, even from the position of excluded terms, can only operate up to a certain limit. That limit is set by the Real. The alternative strategy is to reveal the social antagonism upon which it is excluded and play on the parallax Real between nature and the natural. In this sense, Green radicalism would move to be a discourse of the symptom, rather than the impotent element of a political parallax. To do so, Green Radicalism would have to lose its essentialist edge and instead take a position that attempts to stage the concrete universal. We shall now consider the possibilities of such a position.
6.6 Discourses of the symptom
Concrete universality does operate within a political parallax. This operation differs from the form of concrete universality present within an ontological parallax, but still contains vital similarities. The key link is that in both cases the concrete universal takes in the singular exception, yet exceeds the universal as a whole, bypassing the particular. In a political parallax, concrete universality occurs where the symptom is not constructed via ideological fantasy, but rather as a sign of the incommensurability between two positions in the parallax. For example, rather than constructing the Green party’s inability to establish an economic position congruent with their ecological stance as a failure inherent to party policy, the symptom is instead seen as staging the parallax gap between these positions. Thus the concrete universal acknowledges the position of failure, the parallax gap as the singular exception and passes directly to the level of the universal; there is no common ground between capitalist economics and Green Party ecologism.
As has been previously noted, it is the concrete universal which holds the most hope for generating social change. The issue, however, is accessing the power of the concrete universal through the parallax gap. In the terms of the abstract universal, the concrete universal appears only as an effect through the Real. The basic thesis of the parallax view is that both positions can only be seen if viewed awry; outside of the hegemonic terms of the universal horizon. By identifying the concrete universal - the constitutively excluded element - the unbearable example, the analyst is able to practice concrete universality. What such a performance achieves is a viewpoint which allows for a reinterpretation of the symptom. In doing so, a strategic political position is able to place pressure on the abstract universal, by deconstructing the unconscious supplement which supports the abstract universal. This deconstruction occurs via the Real through the gap opened up by the symptom as a representative of the concrete universal. Such a strategy does not require a positive imaginary, rather only a negative positioning of the symptom is necessary.
Environmental/ecological movements are particularly strong at playing on symptoms of the abstract universal. However, the affect of capital appears to be too strong. As symptoms are developed and strengthened by this discursive method, they are pulled back in by a variety of defence mechanisms developed by capitalism; those methods have been detailed in this chapter. It seems the more that symptoms dislocate the universal horizon of capital, nature, the stronger the reaction. Although these reactions may on the surface appear beneficial, such as recycling, greater energy efficiency etc, they mask a fundamental limit; capital as the Real, both as a social antagonism and the symbolic Real. It is here that we return to the parallax between nature and the natural. Although symptoms are constantly being pulled back into the unconscious supplement which supports the dominant discourse, there is a limit to that process. That limit is the concrete universal, which comes in its Real effect in the form of the natural. It is to the concrete universal that we shall finally turn.
6.7 The Concrete Universal
The Real, through the concrete universal (the natural) is constantly impacting on the discursive construction of nature. Here, however, the concrete universal is not a discourse. The natural can be abstracted and measured, as through ‘natural science’ but this process, as the naming of the natural, simply adds to the discursive construction of nature. Conversely there is a dislocatory effect when knowledge is generated through the natural sciences that cannot be easily integrated into our conception of nature. Alternatively, the act of producing such knowledge is domesticating in itself. It is a discursive production in the realm of science and as such enters into the fantasy of the scientific paradigm; that man has control of the natural. Therefore, when evidence of the failure of nature is produced through the natural sciences e.g. Arctic sea ice has declined 14% over the past year (Fitzsimons, 2006a), a fetishistic disavowal operates, this time with science as the fetishised object. Yes, we know that the environment is failing, yet we act as if it is not because we have faith in science to provide an alternative solution.
Because of this operation, it is proposed that only when humanity is truly forced to experience environmental degradation, not through science, but rather without any symbolic resources available to pacify the event, that true change is possible. Žižek contends that liberal-capitalism cannot go on forever; ecological collapse is one of the possible explosions that can destroy it; all we can do is be prepared when this explosion does occur (Osborne, 1996,p.44). A less dramatic possibility also lies with the prospect of Peak Oil; the idea that global oil production has peaked and is now beginning to decline. Peak Oil is an interesting natural example of concrete universality. Capitalism is dependent on oil for its efficient operation; no other source has been found with anything like its efficiency. The abundance of natural resources for exploitation, Oil foremost amongst them, is a predominant element of the capitalist conception of nature. Whilst Peak Oil is not a concrete universal in itself, Peak Oil does reveal the concrete universal (and thus the parallax Real) within an ontological parallax by invoking the gap between nature and the natural. However, for radical change to occur, global capital would have to go beyond the prospect of Peak Oil (which we are facing now) and Survivalist discourse and into the event of Peak Oil; that is the process of the end of cheap oil. This event would radically destabilise global capital, forcing its limits into reality.
Conversely, relying on the occurrence of such an event is a politically passive strategy, although not to the same degree as complete ecological collapse. However, it appears that the alternative is equally passive; to resist the terms of the debate, to resist the need to act, because such an action will be within the co-ordinates of global capital; it is better to question the very ideological background against which all action can occur; capitalism (Žižek, 2006b,p.238). The alternative would be not to enter into Green ideology, knowing that it is inevitably played out against the background of capital, but rather to question the very lack of alternative, why, in Žižek words; “ Today we can easily imagine the extinction of the human race, but it is impossible to imagine a radical change of the social system - even if life on earth disappears, capitalism will somehow remain intact”(Žižek, 2006b,p.149).
In this chapter we shall first set the theoretical context for this methodological application to Green ideology, both in terms of the development of Green ideology and the specific application of dialectical materialism to Green ideology, specifically the modalities of parallaxes and the Real that are in operation. Following this task, we will move onto the particular defence mechanisms orientated towards symptoms within discourses in Green ideology. Finally, the potential for disrupting capitalism via the symptom is considered. It is found that although the environment is an element that constantly threatens to dislocate capitalism, it is difficult to harness this power in a pro-active manner; that is, without waiting for an ecological collapse. In terms of the method created in the previous chapter and its political implications, Green Ideology exemplifies the efficiency of discursive defence mechanisms in domesticating the dislocating effect of the symptom. Conversely, the importance of the concrete universal - as the impossible element which always returns - is highlighted; hence the political potency of practicing the concrete universal.
6.1 Development of Green Ideology
Since the latter half of the 20th century, various terms have been used to refer to Green ideology. Environmentalism and ecologism are two terms that are often used interchangeably within Green discourse; however, for the purposes of this thesis, a subtle distinction lies between them. Environmentalism is thought to relate more to reformist, particular Green discourses, whereas ecologism takes a stronger, often ecocentric stand (Heywood, 1998,p.264; Smith, 1998,p.66). In this chapter when referring the total field of thought relating to the environment, the term ‘Green’ will be used, whereas ‘environmentalism’ and ‘ecologism’ will be reserved for their respective particular discourses.
A further differentiation, more specific to this thesis, is required between the terms ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’. This distinction owes a lot to the work of Yannis Stavrakakis, particularly his contrast between politics and the political (Stavrakakis, 1999,p.71). Nature is a construction of reality, through the symbolic and its fantasmatic support. Nature, however, cannot exhaust the natural. As such it resembles the relationship between reality and the Real. In terms of Green ideology, the basic parallax of ontological difference lies in the incommensurability between nature and the natural. In this definition, nature is the abstract universal. It refers to the hegemonic conception of the ‘natural’ within any given discourse. In contrast, the natural is the really existing hard material/biological core to nature. It is the trees, seas and genes; the total material entity outside of language. In terms of ontological difference, the natural is the concrete universal. The concrete universal of the natural exceeds that of the universal horizon of nature, yet encompasses its concrete singular exception in that it is only when the abstract universal fails, as revealed in the symptom, that the natural is revealed.
As in any parallax, there is an incommensurable split in operation. What is specific about this parallax for Green ideology is the relationship between the abstract and concrete universal. Rather than the concrete universal operating only as the disavowed foundation of the abstract universal, its minimal difference within itself, the concrete universal in this circumstance is what the abstract universal seeks to represent. The twist, however, is that in seeking to represent the concrete universal, the abstract represses the essential impossibility of this representation; that nature is not the natural - this repression is similar to the fundamental fantasy which represses the act of castration. Therefore, a minimal difference still operates between nature and the natural. This minimal difference is a modality of the Real because of the incommensurable gap introduced within the moment of universality. Further to this, not only does the Real operate as the parallax Real via the incommensurable gap between the abstract and concrete modalities of the universal, but also through the concrete universal as a force in itself; the natural.
As well as the parallax of ontological difference, a second parallax is in operation within Green ideology; the political parallax. Political parallaxes occur, similar to the parallax of ontological difference, when there is no common ground between two perspectives. However, rather than this incommensurability occurring as an internal difference, the parallax occurs between two competing positions. These positions are separated by a fundamental social antagonism, which introduces a parallax gap; the parallax Real. In Green ideology the parallax Real occurs because of the social antagonism caused by global capital. This social antagonism separates perspectives which are dominated by the hegemony of global capital and those which are structured only according to environmental concern. Once again, a symptom of the parallax occurs where the gap (social antagonism) reveals itself. In the case of the political parallax, symptoms can occur on both sides of the parallax.
This political parallax has occurred because capital is also the symbolic Real (Žižek, 2002, p.xii), it has hegemonised the ground upon which discourses of nature are constructed. This does not mean that capital is the Real in the sense that it is an impossiblity or absence, rather it is that which always returns to its place; it forms the background against which all other discourses relate back to; capital has hegemonised hegemony (Žižek, 2000a, p.223; 2000b ,p.319). The symbolic Real has much in common with Fink’s conception of R2, the Real after the letter (as I have developed in Chapter 2). Capital, as the symbolic Real produces a limit within the discursive realm. Any discourse that clashes with a discourse of capital creates a social antagonism, a split within the discourse. Social antagonisms reveal themselves through symptoms which reveal the incommensurability of discourses split by a social antagonism. As we shall latter develop, this occurs most prominently in discourses from the Green Party of New Zealand. This chapter reviews several different Green discourses which form part of the Green ideology, considering the operation of both the parallaxes of ontological difference and the political parallax, as well as the resulting modalities of the Real and their symptoms through the methodology described in Chapter Five and the unique application of these categories are depicted in the introduction to this chapter. Examples of these discourses are taken from New Zealand politics which, while not exhaustive of Green ideology, give an adequate guide.
It is theorised that each discourse is dealing with a primary dislocation, that of the Green critique of industrialism and also the universal hegemonic power of the capitalist economy. Capital provides a fundamental limit to each of the discourses, a Real limit that produces a deadlock around which a plurality of discourses rotates, as well as the displacement of the effect of the Real to various external antagonisms. There are possibilities of radical economic change through the constant dislocation of industrialism and capital through the natural. On the other hand, these dislocations and the symptoms they produce are well domesticated by discourses that cannot move beyond the limit imposed by capital. Therefore only a radical, natural dislocation provides a possibility of change. This work relies predominately on the theory of Laclau and Žižek, however, the analysis of Green discourses by Yannis Stavrakakis, John Dryzek and Toby Smith are also heavily drawn on.
The first prominent dislocations in our construction of the natural began in the later 20th century. A concern with the environment began to develop into a discourse of its own in the 1960’s, along with a host of other changes in social politics at the time, including anti-racism, feminism and the peace movement. Indeed, Dryzek suggests that a concept of the ‘environment’ did not exist until the 1960’s (Dryzek, 2005, p.5). Environmentalism/ecologism did not, however, become a strong force until the 1970’s, when a radical environmental movement developed, part of which was a damming critique of capitalism (Hansen, 1991, p.444). Around this time Green political parties were also established, such as the Values Party in New Zealand, which first formed in 1972 (Dryzek, 2005, p.203).
In New Zealand the environmental movement only captured the attention of the masses when it began to threaten the national identity, or ‘Thing’ in a Lacanian sense. The first risings in the 1970’s were based around protests against the Manapouri dam and then nuclear issues in the pacific. The environmental movement was institutionalised by the state with the anti-nuclear ban of 1985 following various other moves in the 1970’s, particularly by Kirk’s 3rd Labour government. The environmental movement gained a lot of traction from a nationalistic jouissance because New Zealanders believed that their ‘Thing’ was being threatened, either by development, as in the Manapouri dam, or foreigners in the French nuclear tests. Environmentalism has become a part of the New Zealand identity and an increasingly central element in New Zealand politics. For example, National has formed a group within its party called the ‘Blue Greens’ and United Future call themselves the ‘common sense Greens’(United Future, 2005). The ACT party is also getting in on the ‘Green’ message. This spread of environmental politics is mirrored in western nations around the world, with the current notable exception of the United States.
The rapid progression of environment discourse has been a response to symptoms (of the ontological parallax between nature and the natural) emerging of the universal conception of the environment. These symptoms were unable to be pacified within the discursive/fantasmatic resources available and thus produced a plurality of discourses which sought to tame and understand them. The domestication of symptoms is not an arbitrary process, rather, as Stavrakakis states; “the direction of the response (to dislocation) depends on the course of action which seems to be more capable of neutralising the terrorising presence of the impossible Real” (Stavrakakis, 2000, p.109). There are numerous different discursive positions which have battled to provide a domesticating hegemony to Green Ideology by coming to grips with the Real which has provoked a partial dislocation in industrial discourse. This partial dislocation has meant that Green ideology has become more common place, attempting to deal with the threat to the capitalist imaginary produced by climate change. As such, Stavrakakis states;
Increasing numbers of people look for a solution to problems such as unemployment and economic deterioration in Green ideology…If today people are increasing looking to Green ideology in order to solve these problems this means that previously hegemonic identifications have been dislocated (p.111).
6.2 The Symptom; Survivalism
Symptoms within Green ideology come in several different forms. They can be symptoms of the ontological parallax, such as climate change or in the instance of political parallax, the failure of carbon taxes. The initial dislocating symptom of Green ideology was the discourse of Survivalism (Dryzek, 2005). Survivalism was a discursive representation of the growing realisation that humanity’s conception of nature was radically out of balance with the natural. The discursive representation of this symptom did not fully domesticate its Real effect. Although the symptom is symbolised, it is not within the terms of the abstract universal, or in terms that could be reconstructed within the universal horizon. Therefore Survivalism still maintained its dislocatory threat.
Survivalism, first constituted through a report by the Club of Rome in 1972, is based on the belief that industrial production and economic growth is pushing the earth towards or, perhaps past, its carry capacity; the maximum supportable resource use in an ecosystem before its collapse (Dryzek, 2005, p.27). Survivalism is the discourse which first established Green ideology as a political force, although it never fully instituted itself as a positive movement, rather as a threat to the universal imaginary. This was a role that it played particularly successfully, based on a fundamental belief in the finite resource limits of the planet. As such Survivalism became the symptom of industrialism and looked likely to threaten the universal status of industrialism, in both its capitalist and communist forms.
Survivalism rejected the capacity of new technologies to expand resource limits, suggesting that technological advancement simply slowed resource depletion; inadequate when exponential system growth is occurring, such as in human population. The danger of exponential growth is signified by the ‘29th day’ metaphor, a common survivalist image. This metaphor makes a comparison between lilies in a pond and the carrying capacity of the Earth. It asks which day a pond would be half full if the number of Lilies doubles each day and the pond is full on the 30th. The answer is of course the 29th day, on which it would appear that there is plenty of room for expansion. This kind of imagery proved an enormous threat to the hegemonic system of production. However, the advent of Green ideology has not meant a full dislocation of capitalism or of the industrial ethos. Instead, a number of different discursive strategies have been used to domesticate this symptom. It is to these discursive strategies that we now turn.
6.3 Discursive strategies; Repression
The parallax between nature and the natural means that a degree of dislocation of any discourse of nature is inevitable. When that discourse is a capitalist conception of nature, the dislocation is likely to be even stronger because of the drive towards greater exploitation of natural resources. Because of this dislocation, the symptoms of nature are difficult to repress. The closest discourse of Green ideology to the discursive strategy of Repression is Promethean discourse (Dryzek, 2005). Promethean discourse was the initial response to Survivalism; it repressed the symptomatic discourse of Survivalism. The repression, a restoration of original identity provided a form of jouissance because it offered the prospect of quilting the void opened up by Survivalism. The basic premise of Promethean discourse is that humankind has ultimate control of the environment and it is thus able to push the limit of global carrying capacity indefinitely. This is based on free-market economic arguments that suggest that price is the ultimate measure of scarcity; as resources become scarcer, prices will increase producing conservation efforts and a search for substitutes. In order to develop and have access to this technology, societies need to be wealthy. Therefore the key to environmental health is economic wealth.
Promethean discourse is illustrated in the following excerpt from a speech by the leader of the New Zealand ACT Party, Rodney Hide;
(R)esources aren't defined physically but by science and technology combined with our ability to organise and to make use of them. That’s why the human race continues to flourish and prosper 30 years after the environmental doomsday books so terrifyingly predicted our imminent demise. We didn't run out of resources for a very simple reason: we can expand our knowledge and thereby expand our resource base. We now have more resources than ever before. We will have even more tomorrow
I did travel to countries that had run out of everything. These were the eastern bloc countries. Their problem wasn't the physical limits of their resource base but their failed economic system. That's the other problem with the doomsday books. They said a lot about ecology, systems and feedback loops, but ignored, first, the economic system within which natural resources are defined and used and, second, the feedback loop that prices provide. The failure was fatal to the models' predictive power. If something gets scarce, its price goes up, spurring conservation, the search for more supplies and discovery of alternatives (Hide, 2005).
A fine line exists between Hide’s position and the acknowledgement of the symptom. As the discrepancy between nature and the natural starts to reveal itself, it gets more difficult to repress symptoms. Here lies the correlation between acknowledgement and repression. Promethean discourse remains within a repressive operation in that it refuses to acknowledge the symptom, but at the same time acknowledges the symptom sufficiently enough to state the technology will solve the problem; that it is just a temporary blip in the market - if it was really a issue, prices would go up to fix the problem. Indeed, as has been previously noted, these failures are necessary for the continued functioning of the abstract universal. Promethean discourse required the occurrence or even production of failure to be posited in fantasy as contingent or external failures. The minimal acknowledgement of the symptom, within the confines of fantasy, provides this failure.
Conversely, the threat of environment collapse has not simply dissipated with Promethean discourse. It constantly impacts on the social order, such is the impact of the symptom as an excess to the system. Now, although humanity is still threatened by environmental dislocation, which as Žižek shows is one of the modalities in which we regularly meet the Real (Žižek, 1999,p.4), this threat is increasingly particularised and dealt with within a plurality of other discourses around this fundamental blockage; the parallax relationship between economic growth and environmental limits. The symptom continues to impact and thus the Promethean discourse ultimately failed because although it fits in well with the ideological fantasy of economic growth, it failed to adequately domesticate its symptom, the continued failure of nature to represent the natural.
6.4 Acknowledgement of the symptom
The failure of Promethean discourse produced a range of new discursive perspectives that acknowledged the presence of the symptom - environmental limits/climate change- yet domesticated its effects. In terms of the political parallax of Green ideology, these hegemonic discourses operate firmly on the side of global capital. They function through the ideology/fantasy of science and the market, as well as super-ego demand through Green consumerism and ‘clean, green living’. As well as these mechanisms, there is a large degree of fetishism - environmental limits are disavowed at the expense of the consumption of commodities. Disavowal/fetishism is the most powerful force and currently the strongest defence mechanism against symptoms within Green ideology.
6.4.i Ideology
One of the strongest defence mechanisms used against the symptom in Green ideology are the discourses of ‘problem-solving’. These discourses represent the ultimate ideological position in claiming that they are outside of ideology and are taking a neutral perspective. Problem solving discourses, such as Democratic Pragmatism, Administrative and Economic Rationalism take the status quo as given and do not debate the issue of environmental limits which was at the centre of the Survivalist/Promethean division. Instead, problem-solving discourses reject any call to ‘ideology’ and rather focus on pure ‘scientific’ evidence. New Zealand environmental politics rotate between these three types of problem-solving discourses. The Green Party does enter further into the more radical sustainability discourses, but increasingly is looking to democratic participation and economic instruments. By taking the capitalist status quo as a given, problem solving discourses are able to supplement the universal appeal of capital whilst somewhat dealing with the symptom of environmental change, either through domestication through particularism e.g. no real change or sacrifice is required, just good management, or through the positing of an external antagonism (often Green Radicalism); “we are not captured by the extremist fringe of the environmental movement or it’s ideology” (NZ First, 2005a).
Some parties, such as New Zealand First, take a purely economic line; one of New Zealand First’s 15 fundamental principles is; “Wise governments view the preservation and enhancement of the environment as sound economics. All environmental policies will be proactive with a view to creating employment and sustainable wealth whilst improving one of our few competitive advantages” (NZ First, 2005b). Likewise, David Benson-Pope, the former Government Minister for the Environment states; “While there are challenges ahead to maintain economic growth without damaging the environment or quality of life, I’m determined to face up to these challenges - there is no alternative” (Benson-Pope, 2006).
6.4.ii Fetishism and Disavowal
Perhaps the most powerful discourse in terms of protecting a universal horizon against the symptom is disavowal, often combined with fetishism. The Economic Rationalist discourse is a powerful one because it is able to particularise the environmental threat by maintaining the stance that a radical change is not required. Although this discourse does not deny the existence of the symptom, it offers an easy solution, obtainable without sacrifice; indeed through the jouissance of consumption. Within Green ideology, Economic Rationalist discourse takes this position. Economic Rationalism is very similar to the Promethean discourse; it includes much the same actors and assumptions, but makes more of an effort to account for environmental threat. Economic Rationalism is almost a sequel to Promethean discourse. Instead of simply letting the market take care of the environment, Economic Rationalist discourse seeks to establish markets where they did not exist previously, such as for water or pollution. Carbon trading and the Kyoto agreement are examples of the new establishment of markets. At its most radical Economic Rationalism enters into a certain restructuring of the capitalist economy, similar to the discourse of Ecological Modernism. The former discourse is most readily associated with the political and economic Right, but increasingly even social democratic political parties and discourses are seeking to ‘harness the power of the market’. The Green party utilises these kind of movements, seeking to ‘Naturalise’ capitalism (GreenParty, 2005a, 2005d, 2005e), such is the impotence of the ecological side of the political parallax.
Economic Rationalism operates as a disavowal in that it acknowledges the presence of climate change and environmental limits as symptoms, yet continues to operate as if they did not exist by progressing on with, indeed strengthening, the very measures that created these conditions. Like most disavowals, the mechanism that allows this paradoxical operation is a fetish. In this case the fetish comes from consumption, as we shall also later develop in relation to the super-ego. In the case of fetishism and disavowals, the subject acknowledges, often only unconsciously, that consumption and the free-market are destroying the environment, yet refuses to give up the jouissance they obtain through consumption. This jouissance makes this fetish very difficult to break down. Indeed it is the jouissance received from consumption and ‘our (western) way of life’ that creates the social antagonism between global capital and environmental limits seen in the political parallax.
6.4.iii Super-ego demand, ideological fantasy and the Empty Signifier
Green discourses which have operated through ideological fantasy, such as the problem-solving discourses, or through fetishism, however, have not been able to fully integrate the symptom within their universal horizon. Instead, as is the inherent condition of the nature/natural ontological parallax, the symptom continues to operate as an excessive element within the discourse. Therefore, a new breed of discourse has been generated. These discourses take on a super-ego demand, in that the discourse suggests that the subject ‘ought’ to conserve the environment. ‘Sustainability’, predominately the discourses of Ecological Modernism and Sustainable Development, as well as Green consumerism, are the stable discourses of this method. As well as this, empty signifiers are frequently used to give name to the subversion of the staging of absence via the Kantian transcendental illusion (Žižek, 2006a, p.18). This naming allows the illusion that there is something which exists in the gap between the two elements of the political parallax.
Sustainability discourses do not seek to bring down capitalism, but rather to strengthen its hegemony; they attempt to suture the political parallax by privileging capital over the environment. They implicitly and explicitly accept that capitalism is the ‘only game in town’ and therefore ecological movements have no option but to seek to make it profitable for capital to be ‘Green’. To do so would be to dissolve the social antagonism that constructs the parallax; there is no antagonism because ecologicalism fully accepts the legitimate hegemony of capital. This involves some restructuring of capital, but mostly in the name of capital, not the environment. However, although these discourses seek to 'Green' capitalism, all they end up achieving is a pacification of the ecological symptom and a market advantage, playing to the super-ego demand of the consumer, which is what we see in the Green consumerist movement. These include ‘Green’ shopping that plays at super-ego demand, such as re-usable shopping bags (Hickman, 2006). An interesting alternative to the super-ego approach is provided by the Conservation Fund and their Carbon Zero Calculator. Here the consumer is able to approximate their carbon footprint and then ‘Go Zero’ by making a donation towards the planting of native trees to balance out your production of carbon. I could remove my guilt, pollute all I want and ‘Go Zero’ for US$35.50! (The Conservation Fund, 2006).
Green consumerism is one of the strongest Green discourses because its erases our doubts about the feasibility of consumption (over-consumption being suggested as a symptom of capital), suggesting that we can continue consuming at the same rate, as long as we do it in a more efficient and ecologically sensitive manner (Smith, 1998, p.88). Green consumerism also hooks into the very seductive ideological jouissance of the act of consumption itself. However, the duel operation of super-ego and consumption can produce a paradox of increased consumption. With Green consumption, the more one conforms, the guiltier one feels. Added to Green consumption as a modality of the super-ego, we have the paradoxical situation that Green consumption can lead to more consumption; that Green consumption could mean limiting consumption does not fit the co-ordinates of the capitalist matrix, nor the demands of the super-ego. Therefore, although Green consumerism cannot be dismissed outright - undoubtedly it is better for the environment to buy recycled toilet paper than regular - the obscene underside of this action is that it domesticates the environmental symptom. It reduces the environmental problem to an individual one, rather than a constitutive structural fault and suggests that through small actions the problem can be solved. Ultimately then, Green Consumerism cannot be viewed in a positive manner.
6.4.iv The Political Parallax; Empty signifiers
In taking on all these demands, the term ‘Sustainable Development’ becomes an empty signifier in the Laclauian sense; it is filled with meaning by discourses that achieve hegemony. More than this, it allows for the temporary production of a transcendental illusion. The transcendental illusion suggests that something exists in the place of nothing; in the gap between the two mutually exclusive perspectives of the political parallax. The empty signifier, by giving a name to this parallax gap, suggests the possibility its filling. The possibility of such a suture produces jouissance. The use of the empty signifier ‘Sustainable Development’ is vital to the smooth operation of any political formation functioning within Green ideology. Sustainable development seeks to avoid the pitfalls of the political parallax between development and environmental degradation. However, the use of Sustainable Development as a suturing tool does not in any way suggest that it is a middle or neutral point between the discourses. Rather, empty signifiers are hegemonised by the dominant side of the parallax - in this case, capital. Thus, while Green parties and movements may insist on the value of being ‘Sustainable’, the term is being appropriated by capital to mean sustainable growth, which may or may nor have an environmental edge. Thus its very emptiness gives ‘Sustainable Development’ it’s value; it can be taken on by many discourses without compromise, most notably capital.
Capital, however, provides the limit for sustainable development discourses; this limit is the parallax gap. The parallax gap is revealed in the symptoms of sustainability, such as the rejection of Green taxes in New Zealand, such as the now infamous ‘Fart Tax’, as well as the ‘Carbon Tax’. The symptoms of the parallax reveal themselves where the subordinate discourse attempts to push beyond the limits set for it by the hegemonic horizon. This has been the case in Green ideology when moves by ecological discourses begin to threaten capital. These moves are rejected through the threat of ‘disinvestment’ from capital. The disinvestment threat is not direct, but it is real. Governments in liberal-capitalist democracies stand or fall on their abilities to increase and maintain economic growth. Any discursive move and policy that may directly threaten the interests of capital is immediately written off as a threat to economic growth and rejected. Efforts to move environmental protection along market lines have been rejected because of their costs to capital; in stark contrast to the ease at which market measures had been taken on in Health and Education.
Although the Green Party Charter states what appears to be an anti-capitalist manifesto; “Unlimited material growth is impossible. Therefore the key to social responsibility is the just distribution of social and natural resources, both locally and globally” (GreenParty, 2005c)The Green Party are forced to re-interpret ‘Sustainable’ in a capitalistic manner, in the naïve hope that they can manipulate its meaning beyond the currently hegemony of the business world. For example, in the initial issue of the Green’s business publication ‘The Real Bottom Line’, co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons suggests that sustainable business is about “Future-proofing the New Zealand Economy”(Fitzsimons, 2006c). Similarly, in an article entitled ‘More Power to Consumers’ Fitzsimons advocates for more information for consumers to make better choices about their choice of energy supplier (Fitzsimons, 2006b). The Green Party are thus politically limited because they know it is electoral suicide to take on a position that may evoke ‘disinvestment’ threats. Other political parties in New Zealand are also aware of the power of this threat, accusing the Green Party of being ‘Watermelons’; green on the outside, red in the middle (Baldock, 2005; Hide, 2005).
6.5 External discourses- The flip-side of the political parallax
On the other side of the political parallax that operates within Green ideology lay those discourses which are excluded from the dominant terms of the debate; those that do not fit with the limits set by global capital. Green radicalism is by far the most common of these possibilities. Of all the Green discourses that have been analysed in this chapter, it is only Green Radicalism that is not totally anthropocentric. There are anthropocentric elements in Green Radicalism, but a large element of this discourse focuses on the principally excluded ecocentric component of Green ideology. The predominance of ecocentricism within Green radicalism reveals the incommensurability between it and capital; there simply is no common ground.
Discourses such as Green radicalism appear to be a threat to capital because they operate outside its hegemonic domain, however, it is precisely this latter fact that prevents Green Radicalism from becoming a threat. In the parallax of ontological difference the concrete universal is strictly internal to the abstract. In contrast, in the political parallax the excluded Other appears more like Laclau’s constitutive outside; it has no common link with the dominant paradigm, the only link is through exclusion via a core social antagonism. While this exclusion does give stability to the dominant position by allowing the establishment of limits, at the same time it does not act as a threat in the same manner as the concrete universal. The only threat comes in the possibility of revealing the limits of the hegemonic discourse and thus the contingency of its construction.
Green Radicalism is also a fatally flawed discourse in itself, although in a different manner from other Green discourses. Green Radicalism is very essentialist and totalitarian; it is just another, more radical attempt to deal with the symptoms of the parallax between nature and the natural. Radical Green discourse seeks to find a fundamental and essential unity between its elements, based on a ‘natural’ bio-centric harmony between man and nature. Paradoxically, ecocentricism can only be expressed anthropocentrically through language. Like any essentialist discourse, when the inherent impossibility of its construction is exposed, this dislocation is dangerously displaced onto an external antagonism; in the case of radical Green thought, capitalism is one of those antagonisms posited as responsible for the failure of the natural. While the positioning of capital as an antagonism may at first glance appear subversive, in the case of Green Radicalism, it is another example of a fantasmatic operation. As such, radical Green thought is unlikely to present a major threat to capital; its more likely role is to set the very boundaries of capitalism.
It is possible, as Smith (1998, p.163) suggests, that Green Radicalism could make more of an impact if it focused more on the role of culture, fighting for the meanings of terms and the hegemonic re-occupation of terms that originated from the Green movement, such as sustainability, rather than leaving it to capital and those who are prepared to compromise with capital. This is a Laclauian approach. Laclau argues that the role of the excluded terms of the parallax (although Laclau himself does not use the notion of a parallax), such as Green Radicalism, is to form a unity of sorts and attempt to fill the empty signifier which covers the parallax gap with meaning. What this approach ignores, however, is the limits set by capital; capital as the Real in the symbolic sense and in terms of a social antagonism, but also capital as the jouissance that maintains the fantasy which supports capital.
Therefore, the battle over an empty signifier, even from the position of excluded terms, can only operate up to a certain limit. That limit is set by the Real. The alternative strategy is to reveal the social antagonism upon which it is excluded and play on the parallax Real between nature and the natural. In this sense, Green radicalism would move to be a discourse of the symptom, rather than the impotent element of a political parallax. To do so, Green Radicalism would have to lose its essentialist edge and instead take a position that attempts to stage the concrete universal. We shall now consider the possibilities of such a position.
6.6 Discourses of the symptom
Concrete universality does operate within a political parallax. This operation differs from the form of concrete universality present within an ontological parallax, but still contains vital similarities. The key link is that in both cases the concrete universal takes in the singular exception, yet exceeds the universal as a whole, bypassing the particular. In a political parallax, concrete universality occurs where the symptom is not constructed via ideological fantasy, but rather as a sign of the incommensurability between two positions in the parallax. For example, rather than constructing the Green party’s inability to establish an economic position congruent with their ecological stance as a failure inherent to party policy, the symptom is instead seen as staging the parallax gap between these positions. Thus the concrete universal acknowledges the position of failure, the parallax gap as the singular exception and passes directly to the level of the universal; there is no common ground between capitalist economics and Green Party ecologism.
As has been previously noted, it is the concrete universal which holds the most hope for generating social change. The issue, however, is accessing the power of the concrete universal through the parallax gap. In the terms of the abstract universal, the concrete universal appears only as an effect through the Real. The basic thesis of the parallax view is that both positions can only be seen if viewed awry; outside of the hegemonic terms of the universal horizon. By identifying the concrete universal - the constitutively excluded element - the unbearable example, the analyst is able to practice concrete universality. What such a performance achieves is a viewpoint which allows for a reinterpretation of the symptom. In doing so, a strategic political position is able to place pressure on the abstract universal, by deconstructing the unconscious supplement which supports the abstract universal. This deconstruction occurs via the Real through the gap opened up by the symptom as a representative of the concrete universal. Such a strategy does not require a positive imaginary, rather only a negative positioning of the symptom is necessary.
Environmental/ecological movements are particularly strong at playing on symptoms of the abstract universal. However, the affect of capital appears to be too strong. As symptoms are developed and strengthened by this discursive method, they are pulled back in by a variety of defence mechanisms developed by capitalism; those methods have been detailed in this chapter. It seems the more that symptoms dislocate the universal horizon of capital, nature, the stronger the reaction. Although these reactions may on the surface appear beneficial, such as recycling, greater energy efficiency etc, they mask a fundamental limit; capital as the Real, both as a social antagonism and the symbolic Real. It is here that we return to the parallax between nature and the natural. Although symptoms are constantly being pulled back into the unconscious supplement which supports the dominant discourse, there is a limit to that process. That limit is the concrete universal, which comes in its Real effect in the form of the natural. It is to the concrete universal that we shall finally turn.
6.7 The Concrete Universal
The Real, through the concrete universal (the natural) is constantly impacting on the discursive construction of nature. Here, however, the concrete universal is not a discourse. The natural can be abstracted and measured, as through ‘natural science’ but this process, as the naming of the natural, simply adds to the discursive construction of nature. Conversely there is a dislocatory effect when knowledge is generated through the natural sciences that cannot be easily integrated into our conception of nature. Alternatively, the act of producing such knowledge is domesticating in itself. It is a discursive production in the realm of science and as such enters into the fantasy of the scientific paradigm; that man has control of the natural. Therefore, when evidence of the failure of nature is produced through the natural sciences e.g. Arctic sea ice has declined 14% over the past year (Fitzsimons, 2006a), a fetishistic disavowal operates, this time with science as the fetishised object. Yes, we know that the environment is failing, yet we act as if it is not because we have faith in science to provide an alternative solution.
Because of this operation, it is proposed that only when humanity is truly forced to experience environmental degradation, not through science, but rather without any symbolic resources available to pacify the event, that true change is possible. Žižek contends that liberal-capitalism cannot go on forever; ecological collapse is one of the possible explosions that can destroy it; all we can do is be prepared when this explosion does occur (Osborne, 1996,p.44). A less dramatic possibility also lies with the prospect of Peak Oil; the idea that global oil production has peaked and is now beginning to decline. Peak Oil is an interesting natural example of concrete universality. Capitalism is dependent on oil for its efficient operation; no other source has been found with anything like its efficiency. The abundance of natural resources for exploitation, Oil foremost amongst them, is a predominant element of the capitalist conception of nature. Whilst Peak Oil is not a concrete universal in itself, Peak Oil does reveal the concrete universal (and thus the parallax Real) within an ontological parallax by invoking the gap between nature and the natural. However, for radical change to occur, global capital would have to go beyond the prospect of Peak Oil (which we are facing now) and Survivalist discourse and into the event of Peak Oil; that is the process of the end of cheap oil. This event would radically destabilise global capital, forcing its limits into reality.
Conversely, relying on the occurrence of such an event is a politically passive strategy, although not to the same degree as complete ecological collapse. However, it appears that the alternative is equally passive; to resist the terms of the debate, to resist the need to act, because such an action will be within the co-ordinates of global capital; it is better to question the very ideological background against which all action can occur; capitalism (Žižek, 2006b,p.238). The alternative would be not to enter into Green ideology, knowing that it is inevitably played out against the background of capital, but rather to question the very lack of alternative, why, in Žižek words; “ Today we can easily imagine the extinction of the human race, but it is impossible to imagine a radical change of the social system - even if life on earth disappears, capitalism will somehow remain intact”(Žižek, 2006b,p.149).
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