The economic stages a comeback

I have had a bit of a change of heart since my last post. I think that I have moved too far away from my original project. I started out with a psychoanalytic critique on the possibilities of achieving anti-capitalist change. I have now ended up stuck in an ally with psychoanalytic ethics and the pure politics of radical democracy. This is not to say that these issues are not important, indeed they are vital to my thesis. However, I do not believe that they form the core of my thought. Rather, I would like to refocus the thesis towards the economy, rather than politics. Ultimately, the two are unavoidably linked, but I think we must acknowledge that the economy should be the fundamental site of struggle for the left.

This position is much more Zizekian than I had previously been writing from. In fact, my redirection in thought was driven by re-reading Conversations with Zizek, an excellent book. This is not to say that I have abandoned Laclau, but rather that at this stage I believe that Zizek will provide the core insights into my main argument. As I see it now, my thesis would take the following shape;

Introduction
- Fundamentals of psychoanalysis/ Discourse theory
- Capitalism from a psychoanalytic point of view

Critiques of capitalism
- Radical democracy/pure politics; Laclau, Mouffe and Stavrakakis
- Islam
- Ecologism
- Zizekian: Internal problems of capitalism. Traversing the fantasy, the act and the singular

What is to be done?
- Problems/Solutions/Alternatives
- Ethics?

Conclusion

I forsee the main difficulty will be running in psychoanalytic theory with political critique. There are two major theories at work, discourse theory and Zizek’s Lacanian. Both are ontological theories as well as normative political programs/critiques, although they are intimately linked. Therefore I may end up using Islam and ecologism as examples, rather than sections in their own right. It will largely depend on the outcome of my work on psychoanalytic theory.

At the moment what grips me the most is Zizek’s notion of universality produced through the interplay of the abstract universal, particular and singular. Laclau’s conception of universality is remarkably similar to Zizek’s as well. What interests me most with this form of universality is that it focuses on the constitutive exclusion that produces the universal. I believe that it is this exclusion in capitalism – in the form of the third world- that could provide the most traction for an anti-capitalist move.

However, with all this I have ignored the question of ethics that held me back previously. It is not that I do not think that ethics are important any more or that I have resolved the issue, but rather that I have come to peace with contingency. To me now contingency does not mean a lack in the ethical, but rather a need to be responsible for ethical decisions. Because there is no big Other to guarantee ethics, but ethical decisions cannot be avoided, we are responsible for the consequences of our ethical acts. We can try to be the best that we can be, and we have to be open to alternatives, but we still have to make decisions within a symbolic field that have both symbolic and real consequences.

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor...

I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving ( Apocalypse Now).

What I am ultimately trying to produce is a political/economic theory or program that is not simply deconstructive, but rather can be used in a political sense of making the space of the political ethical in itself. However, this is extremely problematic and in the most part goes against the work of Laclau and Zizek. Yet I am continuing with it because I believe that there has to be something wrong with the material despair and suffering in the world. However, I cannot find a direct route to the ethical through psychoanalysis, so I am searching for an opportunity to do so whilst staying within the theoretical confines of psychoanalysis. I believe that Laclau and Zizek do this themselves; they also just can’t justify it.

So, what is the problem? I have stated what I believe the issue to be, why isn’t this enough? The problem starts with contingency and necessity. We see that essentialism is rejected because we have no access to the real, to Truth; everything is mediated through the system of meaning which is the symbolic. Therefore nothing is necessary; it is simply contingent on the discursive and the sliding of signifiers. However, if something is simply contingent, then relativism is the danger; if anything goes than everything stays. This presents three problems- one ontological, one normative, and the third of the relationship between them.

Ontologically, if contingency is necessary doesn’t this contradict the very basis of contingency? This is Judith Butler’s criticism, which Laclau firmly rejects- if historicity is purely historical than in this case is it possible to have a society look like that was ahistorical? Rather Laclau argues that it is the relationship between the two which is important; contingency can only occur within the necessary (the symbolic), but the symbolic is at the same time contingent. Zizek makes a similar point in relation to the concrete universal, which occurs when we see the contingency in the necessary. This contingency is the necessary exclusion of a singular, which creates the space for the concrete universal. The concrete universal is the ethical moment of the social; it is the process that keeps power fluid, and the key moment for both Laclau and Zizek, if in different ways. As Laclau states in Reflections on the revolutions of our time (211);

‘ A free society is not one where a social order has been established that is better adapted to human nature, but one which is more aware of the contingency and historicity of any order’

Laclau’s point here is certainly theoretically consistent, yet it is insufficient in itself for what I am trying to achieve. For one it is necessarily unable to politically construct, nor does is it able to produce an adequate account (for me) of why we should care for the disavowed, whose material suffering, I’m sure they would not agree, is not contingent. Therefore I find myself trying to theoretically devise a scheme around what I intuitively feel, rather than cognitively consider. It is easy to get into a quasi-solipsistic introspective spiral about the affective dimensions of my attempts at theorising. But we have bigger fish to fry. Hopefully. Thus, I am left wondering if we extend this ethical approach further (of contingency), can it deal with the kind of material suffering I am feeling for?


‘Once we accept the necessity of the political and the impossibility of a world without antagonism, what needs to be envisaged is how it is possible under those conditions to create or maintain a pluralistic democratic order; we must not have enemies to be destroyed, but adversaries to be tolerated’


Thus Laclau contends that a normative approach does arise from the ontological (the ethics of the universal- radical democracy). However, he does deny that any particular substance can come from the empty universal. This is my difficulty. It leaves me stuck back at the point that I have to wonder whether this is simply the ethic of psychoanalysis and there is a possibility of something outside of it which could potentially be developed. Here I am thinking about whether an ethics, based on psychoanalysis e.g. contingency can provide the base for a political system. This is mainly because of my second exception, that of the normative.

If all is contingent, why do we favour some above others? If anything goes, doesn’t everything stay? This is an accusation that Laclau strongly rejects, although I can’t really say why and indeed Laclau certainly prefers the left wing politics to the right. Why is this?

In some works, such as Contingency, Hegemony and Universality Laclau appears to deny taking a strong political position. He states that he is simply interested in the universal gap of the ethical which stays the same (in form) in every possible symbolisation. If we exploit this gap we can see the contingency of the social which is our goal, not human nature, even though, as ontological theory of the social and the subject, contingency as a value is as close to mapping human nature as a postmodern social theorist would get.

This, it seems to be is a half-arsed effort at emancipation. Laclau and Zizek appear to be prepared to reject any form of positive universalism and are aware of global issues, yet are not able/prepared to suggest a way forward outside of pure theory. Neither use contemporary political example nor analysis, and Zizek often ends up petering off into the kind of cultural analysis he dislikes so much. It is through this that we can emancipate human kind? Now of course such an effort is necessarily impossible. But that does not mean that politics cannot be a source of improvement, of emancipation still to come, a political form which is aware of its own impossibility, yet is able to address the horrible disavowed foundations of our society.

Sure, Zizek is right in suggesting that there is no freedom, other than the Leninist freedom to question the very parameters of society. However I believe that we need to take a further step to say that yes, this kind of freedom is vital to avoid/contain the horrific externalisation of lack that comes with any attempt at universalism, but there are steps that need to be taken to achieve this status. For example, the 100,000 dying of hunger everyday (http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2005/051028_Ziegler_PC.doc.htm) or the 25 million displaced by conflict war (http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/chap1.htm) have less of an opportunity to enjoy contingency than others.

Now one may argue that these are the result of other not being aware of the contingent and arbitrary nature of their own goals, and singular proof of the failure of the abstract universal. However, to deal with these issues, I believe a political/ethical system (of kinds) is required.

So what is my solution? Is the global institutionisation of radical democracy enough? This is a difficult area, and will be the start of a new piece. For here it is enough to identify the difficulty of any universal construction, even if it is empty, or striving to maintain the place of the ethical universal. Therefore we must deal with objections from Laclau, and most polemically Zizek. However, I believe that such a construction is a possible, if a difficult task.

There is no Truth but this truth

Because of the fundamental negativity (and thus contingency) of the social, the social itself does not prescribe any particular ethical content. However, when one states that the social is necessarily contingent, a circular and paradoxical loop is created. If the contingent is necessary, then the contingent itself must logically be contingent. There has to be some base here and thus the ontological implications of psychoanalysis become normative, despite their very rejection of the normative itself.

This vicious cycle is deemed to be avoided because the ontological, despite prescribing a form which has ethical and normative implications, does not present a particular content. In this way there is not a psychoanalytic ethic as such, rather an orientation towards the ethical. However, this orientation has to have normative repercussions. The ethical (as an empty place) has no content itself, but because it itself is an ontological impossibility, any attempt at signifying it necessarily places it within the discursive, and thus fills it with content. Therefore the ethical is only retrospectively empty and neutral; we always experience it as a particular content.

This brings the problem identified by Zizek in the relationship between the universal, the particular and the singular. Any universality (because of the impossibility of any universal) has to be through a particular content, which takes the place of the impossible universal (e.g. the empty signifier). However, because the universal takes a particular form, it is necessarily exclusive; indeed it is constituted by this exclusion. It is this exclusion that Zizek labels the singular. For Zizek the ethical lies in identification with this singular, as constitutive of the universal.

This undermines the possible of radical democracy. In this perspective, the place of power is to be kept empty because of the undecidability of ethics. However, the institutions required to keep this place of power empty presuppose a Universalist ethical conception. This will be the subject of my next piece, but for here it is enough to say that if we identify with ethics as the identification and institutionalisation of contingency, this enters us into a debate about means and ends, e.g. Ensuring that each has the ability (freedom and equality) to debate the ethical, and as such a universalism of a particular content. However, this will always be based on an exclusion of kinds. For Zizek this exclusion ( from the democratic form) is capitalism, which democracy implicitly supports, despite it undermining the basic principles of the contingent ethic.

Therefore, by identifying with the singular, we acknowledge that any conception of the ethical, even if it is based on an impossible ethic, is up for debate. This leaves us with the contradictory position of trying to defend the normative assumptions of our anti-normative position. For insistence, what are the radical democrats to say if a fundamentalist movement, which rejects the radical ethical position, is to take power ?

It seems that it is necessary for radical democracy/ liberalism as a whole to associate more strongly with a normative ethical position, even if it is an empty one.

An optimisitic negative ethics

Psychoanalytic ethics are distinct from traditional conceptions of ethics in that psychoanalysis does not prescribe any positive content to the ethical. Rather such a prescription appears to be the ethical’s opposite. Traditional political ethics are based on a ‘positive’, or stand alone essence to the social, such as a ‘state of nature’, or ‘species being’ approach. These perspectives have been used in the work of Thomas Hobbes, Karl Marx, John Rawls and Terry Eagleton. Psychoanalytic theory has some similarity in this regard, however, it also has some crucial differences.

The core difference is that the former theories are stand alone, they are ethical on their own and as such require no further justification from any larger foundation- they are the Truth, with rational laws naturally stem from them. In the psychoanalytic point of view there is no positivity to social life. Indeed the social- both the subject and the object- are constituted by a lack. It is this lack; a fundamental impossibility of achieving Truth (and thus finding the final solution to ethics) which creates an opportunity for the ethical.

The concept of lack as inherent to the human condition stems from both psychoanalysis and the ‘turn to language’ in the 1960s and 70s. These have been combined most prominently, and fruitfully, in the work of Jacques Lacan and most recently, Slavoj Zizek and Ernesto Laclau.

Lack occurs in both the subject which is alienated from its image, and in the symbolic Other, where there is no correspondence between the signifier (the word) and the signified (the thing-in-itself). Instead meaning is created purely through the play of signifiers. It is this play, and the necessary attempts to achieve an impossible closure that form the basis of Laclau’s Discourse theory.

According to Discourse theory, particular content (e.g. signifiers) attempts to suture the social by filling the gap in the symbolic order. Any content which succeeds (although not permanently) in doing so has become an empty signifier, and generally a hegemonic discourse (a discourse which becomes the condition of possibility for any truth claim).

A hegemonic discourse conceals the lack in the social. A necessary condition of this lack is that there is no true universal, or Truth. Rather there is an ultimate undecidability, and therefore any order which is presented as universal is always based on exclusion. For Zizek, this fantasmatic exclusion is the role of ideology, in presenting the social as full, or at least potentially full, and externalising the necessary lack. We see this occurring most dramatically in Nazi Germany with its notion of the Jew.

Therefore for Psychoanalysis, rather than attempt to find a fullness which is impossible, and necessarily exclusive, the ethical is to show the radical contingency of any social construction, and the manner in which any universal is based on the elevation of a particular, and thus the exclusion what Zizek terms a singular.


As Ernesto Laclau states ‘ A free society is not one where a social order has been established that is better adapted to human nature, but one which is more aware of the contingency and historicity of any order’ . To show the contingency of any order, according to Slavoj Zizek, one has to either break through the fantasy (which provides jouissance to subject in the possibility of closure), or alternatively engage in a radical ethical act which changes the fundamental conditions of possibility.

However, this leaves upon questions, particulary in regards to what appears to be a logic contradiction in the necessity of contingency, and also in the political possibilities of such an ethic.

Dreaming the impossible of impossibility ?

At the moment I am at a crossroads in terms of the political possibilities of psychoanalysis. I believe that the psychoanalytic field itself is split between these positions, and again within the optimistic and pessimistic viewpoints. As I see it there are those like Judith Butler and Sean Homer who believe that the negative ontology of psychoanalysis commits the political to either a celebration of failure (Butler), or pure deconstruction (Homer). It is the latter which appeals to me most. However, I shall return to this latter.

However, generally psychoanalytic political theory seems to be rather optimistic about the consequences of the negative ontology of psychoanalysis, although it too is split between differing conceptions. From the basic Lacanian point of view, psychoanalysis is politically optimistic once one accepts the impossibility of a positive essence to the social. Such an essence would produce natural laws and stable social relations. In contrast psychoanalysis considers that change is always possible, and indeed immanent.

The optimism about this negative ontology is presented in two contrasting manners;
- Radical democracy, represented (with slight variation) by Ernesto Laclau, Yannis Stavrakakis and Chantal Mouffe. Mouffe and Stavrakakis seek to use democracy as an empty signifier representing lack itself. Rather than an ethics of harmony (which is currently hegemonic in liberal democracy) what is required is an acceptance of conflict, and the lack inherent in any universal conception.
- The contrasting viewpoint is characterised by Slavoj Zizek. Zizek started out in defence of liberal democracy against totalitarianism, taking a similar position to the radical democrats, although with a more Lacanian take than Laclau’s discourse theory. Of particular importance is the emphasis on the register of the imaginary (and fantasy) and the real/jouissance. Thus to reveal the contingency of fantasy is all important, hence ‘traversing the fantasy’. However, Zizek has since rejected liberal democracy because of its implicit links with capital. As such he asserts that liberal democracy itself provides a fantasy, and it can only be overthrown by a radical and often chance ‘ethical act’.


For me, Zizek objection to the formalism of democracy (as an empty place of power that is controlled by capital) are valid, although on his conclusions of the consequences of this move, I am not so convinced. The ethical act, at least in my vulgar conception of it, appears to be only a destructive/deconstructive method, one over which we have little control, and thus we could wind up with an ethically worse position then when we started. However, such an assertion takes a different definition of ethical. As I understand it, an ethical move in psychoanalysis takes the form of an act that reveals the contingency of meaning in any given circumstance. For my mind this is not a wholly satisfactory political position. It may be the ethic of psychoanalysis to constantly show the contingency of any social construction, but in doing so it seems that psychoanalytic thought is confined to a political deconstructive role. What does psychoanalysis say for any other conception of non- deconstructive ethics? Are they anti-ethical (e.g. the construction of a fantasy which is the anti-thesis of deconstructive), aethical/nonethical or is this method of ethics acceptable, but simply not the territory of psychoanalysis?

However at the same time, theorists within psychoanalysis do seem to take ethical (moral?) positions. Zizek is certainly anti-capitalist (even if he is not pro-socialist) and Laclau seeks to develop the enlightenment values of freedom and equality, without any explicit reason. To me it seems that there is some inherent ethical/moral reasoning going on, and as such it is one of my next tasks to see what this relationship is, particularly between psychoanalytic theorists and anti-capitalism/Marx.

I guess I am seeking a reason, or a base on which to plant my own political thought. No one defends pure relativism, and while I am not seeking a positive essence of the social- psychoanalytic thought clearly reveals this impossibility- I wonder whether a political ethic can be developed taking on the psychoanalytic insights into the human condition (and its implications for the social), without falling into a purely deconstructive mode. Is there a way that we can suggest a path forwards that could rid the world of at least some of the suffering inflicted by and on the world’s inhabitants?

Such a task may be impossible, and certainly does not appear popular in psychoanalytic theory. In any case it is way too big for a Master’s thesis, but at the moment it seems to be what is gripping me. It maybe that there is nothing there, but I want there to be and I can’t face the horror of the possibility that there isn’t, but that is just the human condition isn’t it?