This is what I think ?

Socio-political change occurs through the dynamic dialectic interactions of the universal and the excluded real. The universal, in its abstract form, is both impossible, in that it can never be fully constituted and necessary due to the need to avoid the naked anxiety of the real. It is this dynamic contradiction that drives the dialectic process and hence political change. This essay investigates two different approaches to political change and the paradoxical relationship between universalism and the real in order to develop a basic political/theoretical apparatus for this thesis. As well as this, the prospect of a psychoanalytic political position is discussed, particularly in relation to democracy.

The first approach, characterised by Ernesto Laclau, as well as Yannis Stavrakakis, investigates the relationship between universalism, particular demands and democracy. For Laclau, the universal is a mediation of the split particular and is revealed in the production of empty signifiers. This universalism is filled by ‘chains of equivalence’ that infuse the empty universal with meaning. However, because of the impossible nature of the universal, these attempts at universalism are doomed to fail. However, the inevitability of failure should not stop such attempts. Therefore the role of the political Left is to develop a universal imaginary upon which to place the now divergent particular demands of Leftist politics. For Laclau such a position is radical democracy. Radical democracy seeks to institutionalise the lack of the real and reign in the power of ideology.

Although Slavoj Zizek also endorses the radical democratic ethos, he has considerable more reservations than Laclau, particularly in regard to the power of the economy (Bulter, Laclau, & Zizek, 2000:4). However, democracy is not the main cite of Zizek’s theoretical and political focus. Instead Zizek maintains that the repoliticization of the economy should be the primary focus of the political ambitions for the Left. Zizek’s treatment of the universal and the real is also vitally different. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian dialectics, Zizek rejects Laclau’s use of the abstract universal and instead focuses on the concrete universal. The concrete universal develops through the presentation of the symptom, the effect of the real on the imaginary universal, as structurally constitutive.

This essay goes on to argue that it is the concrete universal that holds the most hope of political change through the Lacanian act. The act breaks up the underlying fantasy of the order and reveals the disavowed foundations of the universal. As such it redefines the conditions of possibility and produces change. An Act occurs from the inherent impossibility of the social. Thus the symptom has to become active to push from the possible of this impossibility to become a concrete universal. It is concrete universality, breaking through fantasy and becoming an act, which is most likely to produce change. However, although the act produces change, the aim of a political intervention is to produce progressive political change. Therefore I posit that the act needs to be quickly followed, or paired with, an alternative ideology from which the subject can gain stability.

A true and natural universal is impossible because of the negative ontology of the social. One cannot have access to things-in-themselves, all knowledge is mediated through the symbolic and therefore a gap, or lack, is introduced into the system. Therefore the signified only has a retroactive influence on the signifier. Rather it is the play of signifiers that creates meanings. However, through ideological closure, these meaning are made to retroactively appear organic, as if they have developed naturally from the signified. This same process is seen with the universal. Because a universal cannot objectively and fully develop, any universal is necessarily false. However, the universal is not presented in this manner. Instead a false, or abstract universal, is created and made to appear to be both natural and universal.

Consequently the negative ontology of the social is the key focus for Lacanian psychoanalytic thought on universality. For Lacan it means that universality can never be fully constituted in itself. Instead any form of identity has to be abstracted from a particular, and as such must exclude some element to successfully achieve this abstraction (Zizek, 1999:180). Therefore because the social is partial, the generation and presentation of the universal is highly political as the universal creates an ‘objective’ formation out of previously particular elements(Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000:14). This universal, or in Laclauian terms, hegemonic, formation hides the very limit of discourse which threatens the identity which it has constructed, to the extent that Laclau states;

‘every relation of representation is founded on a fiction: that of the presence at a certain level of something which, strictly speaking, is absent from it’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985:119).

In contrast to this false universality, a positive ontology would create a natural universal, producing logical laws, such as the neo-liberal view of the market. If such an objective universal did exist, the play of the social would cease. As Laclau suggests, it is the impossibility of society which creates the possibility of hegemony and politics(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985).

Therefore our political battles are ultimately efforts to deal with the anxiety of the real (Stavrakakis, 1999:72). This occurs because ultimately reality can only be posited as natural if the real outside of reality is ascribed to the other who took it from us (ibid:80). The positive externalisation of lack is called ideology, or more accurately ideological fantasy. Ideological fantasy, the symbolic component of the imaginary, has the role of presenting the symbolic as full. This occurs through a hegemonic abstraction, both in presenting a particular as full and externalising the symptom.

Given the role of the real, and the impossibility of universality, two options are left for politics and political change. One can battle against the effects of the real and operate in fantasy. Alternatively, lack can be institutionalised and taken on as a constitutive element of the social.

The first such approach is characterised by the work of Sean Homer. Homer suggests that the power of ideological discourse is too strong and as such because psychoanalytic political theory does not engage in ideology, it is impotent. The power of fascist movements in creating change is witness to such a position. However, this would be a politics without the influence of psychoanalysis. Homer suggests that the role of psychoanalysis, playing the cynic, would be to direct the universal, knowing its flexibility, to the most politically ‘ethical’ position (cited in Stavrakakis, 1999:112).

However, Homer’s position contradicts the basic focus of (political) Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lacan’s psychoanalytic process attempts to reveal the lack in the other. By doing the opposite and entering the realm of phantasmatic politics, psychoanalysis is impotent. We must not overlook that any attempt at utopia produces its opposite and then focuses its politics on its removable (Stavrakakis, 1999:100). The consequences of such actions should not be easily forgotten.

Because of this, the role of psychoanalysis is to emphasise the inherent gap in the social. Yannis Stavrakakis takes this a step further and suggests that the structural lack in the social needs to be institutionalised in a program of radical democracy (ibid). The main proponents of this form of democracy are (as well as Stavrakakis) Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Radical democracy differs from traditional phantasmatic democracy in that the ethics of harmony/consensus in democracy is replaced by an ethics of the real, of accepting conflict and antagonism rather than seeking remove it from the political process.

However, the role of the real is somewhat muted in Laclau’s theoretical work, Discourse theory. The core of Discourse theory entails the investigation of the manner in which contingent and historical meanings are articulated to appear to be objective. Laclau’s main political concern is the construction of a contingent universalism in order to provide a new social imaginary for the Left. In this sense, Laclau’s political concern is twofold. Laclau recognises that there is no natural or objective universal, indeed he states that;

‘the only democratic society is one that continually shows the contingency of its own origins’(Laclau, 2000b:87).

However, because democracy becomes the battle for ‘empty signifiers (terms filled with meaning by chains of equivalence), Laclau advocates that the Left also produce empty signifiers, which structure the abstract universal. Although the empty signifier is empty by itself, it takes on a universal function. This universal function is filled with meaning by what is referred to as the ‘logic of equivalence’. This logic is a chain of signs which seek to fill the universal emptiness of the empty signifier. This logic is crucial for liberal democracy, as political representatives compete to fill the chain of equivalence.

Because the empty signifier is by definition empty, no ontic content necessarily stems from the system limit that produces empty signifiers. Instead the type of signifiers that fill an empty signifier are entirely reliant on the context in which they are created, and thus the unevenness of the social (Laclau, 2000c:192). Therefore Laclau suggests that there is nothing preventing empty signifiers representing the impossibility of the social itself, as in the universalism of contingency which is an the core of radical democracy (ibid:199)

In this sense Laclau’s position is has some similarity to Homer, accept Laclau suggests that the Left should enter the ideological game, but with an ideology of contingency. Thus where the two theorists differ is that Laclau believes that it is only radical democracy that can reign in the power of phantasmatic (or in his terms, hegemonic) political positions by recognising that no one position can hold the place of power (Laclau, 2000b:54). The ultimate place of power stays necessarily empty.

However, in doing this Laclau focuses only on the relationship between the universal and the particular; in Lacanian terms, the imaginary and the symbolic. Laclau hints at the real, but allows it no specific political significance. As well as this, Laclau ignores the role of jouissance and fantasy in the imaginary (see Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003), although Laclau argues, unconvincingly, that he does include these factors in his work (Laclau, 2003). Thus Laclau’s twofold theory of the social lacks the depth provided by the work of Slavoj Zizek.

I believe it is Zizek who is best placed to understand the dialectics and dynamics of change. Zizek, taking a more Hegelian/Lacanian perspective, contrasts with Laclau’s position whilst endorsing many of the key features of his argument. Where Laclau examines the interplay between the abstract universal and the particular, Zizek adds a third and fourth to this formula. These elements are the singular/symptom and concrete universality. This Hegelian turn reveals a much greater potential for dislocation of the social.

The singular and symptom are very similar, if not abstractly the same. Despite the similarity between the singular and symptom, the singular is not a term often used by Zizek. The singular is most often used in The Ticklish Subject (Zizek, 1999), and is examined in Sarah Kay’s introduction to Zizek’s work (Kay, 2003). Indeed in The Ticklish Subject, Zizek sometimes substitutes the term ‘individual’ for singular, to describe the remainder of the universalising process;

‘We should therefore consider three, not just two, levels: the empty UNIVERSAL, the PARTICULAR content which hegemonizes the empty Universal, and the INDIVIDUAL, the symptomatic excess which undermines this hegemonic content… One can see immediately in what sense the individual is the dialectical unity of Universal and Particular: the individual bears witness to the gap between the Universal and Particular’ (Zizek, 1999:181, emphasis in orginal).

This definition of the singular/individual is very similar to that of the symptom;

‘ The symptom is, strictly speaking, a particular element which subverts its own universal, a species subverting its own genus’ (Zizek, 1989:21).

Therefore the singular/symptom arises as the excess which is a necessary condition of the universal; the symptom reveals the presence of the real (Zerilli, 1998). Because the universal is always false, it is always a hegemonic abstraction from a particular, there will necessarily be an element left out. The singular/symptom is this element and thus it reveals the gap between the universal and the particular. The symptom is that while reveals the presence of the real. Of course the real is outside of the symbolic and can only be seen in its effects. As such it is an effect without (known) cause. This effect- of showing the limits of the discursive- is the symptom/singular of universality. Where Laclau is simply aware of this effect he places no political significance on. The closest Laclau comes to the symptom is social antagonism. Laclau places social antagonism at the point where discourses collide, thus, similar to the symptom, antagonism reveals the system limit of the social. It is through antagonism that meanings are considered to be destabilised in Discourse theory, through those elements in the discursive that have been excluded (Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000:9-14). Yet, despite the deconstructive presence of the excluded being noted by Laclau, his focus is on the empty signifier and universalism. In contrast for Zizek it is the symptom should be the focus of politics.

The difference between the singular and symptom is abstract. When discussing the symptom, compared to the singular/individual, Zizek considers a greater attachment to jouissance; the role of enjoyment in the constitutive exception of universality. Therefore the symptom appears to be a more complete term than the singular.

The symptom is also more enigmatic. The symptom appears as a coded object (Lacan originally thought symptoms were produced with an eye to interpretation), not necessarily the straight opposite of the abstract universal, as with the singular (Milovanovic, 2004:373). As an illustration, with the universal capitalist market, the singular may be market failure, but the symptom is more likely to be harder to decipher. It is for this reason that the first stage of the psychoanalytic cure is the interpretation of symptoms. A recent example of a symptom of the capitalist market is the failure of the North Shore City Council to protect the Long-Bay Okura Great Park, despite overwhelming support for the concept. Here, the market is seen to fail to meet the needs of the people, but this failure is not interpreted by most as a market failure; the cause is attributed to another factor, in this circumstance, the council.

Thus we see the intimate relationship between the symptom and ideology. As the symptom is the coded failure of the universal and ideological fantasy is that which protect the subject from that failure. Ideology operates by presenting the social as a positive entity, devoid of symptoms. In order to do this, any symptom that reveals itself is externalised; the symptom is presented as an impediment caused by an uncontrollable external factor, or a fixable internal impediment. The key to ideology is to avoid presenting the symptom for what it is; the return of the real, of what has to be repressed for the (false) universal to constitute itself as a universal (Zizek, 2002:160-1).

However, concrete universality should not be seen as the natural process for the symptom. Generally this symptom is swept up in fantasy and ideology; it is attributed as a fault of the other who has stolen fullness and thus Jouissance from the subject. Zizek suggests that for change to occur, we need to break with the fantasy which holds the symptom at bay and come to view the symptom as the true universal; concrete universality.

However, there is another factor at work in muting in the effect of the symptom. That factor is the super-ego. The super-ego, in Lacanian terms differs from Freud’s original conception. Freud maintained that the super-ego helped to keep the id in check and maintain a balanced ego. In contrast Lacan considered that the super-ego is not only the subject’s ‘moral’ or normative conscience, but more productively an unconscious site of enjoyment/perversion. Thus where Freud fundamentally conceived the unconscious to be an area of resistance to law, Lacan regards the unconscious, through the super-ego, to be the very place of compliance; one does not battle to follow the law, instead the subject enjoys the submission to the normative through the surplus enjoyment of the super-ego.

In the Lacanian conception, the super-ego is the obscene supplement to the symbolic law; it is the guilt/surplus enjoyment which presses the subject to believe. In the process of subjectification, the subject has made the (forced) choice away from Jouissance and into language. Although pure Jouissance is not attainable after subjectification, this impossibility is forgotten. The subject represses the initial negation, the impossibility of achieving fullness; that we never had the thing in the first place. However, the super-ego helps to maintain the possibility of symbolic fullness. It presses a ‘guilt’ upon the subject when gaps in the social appear if the subject does not follow the symbolic law. In this sense the super-ego forms an obsence underlying law which operates, and supports, the public law. This operation is seen most vividly at the point of failure of the law (Zizek, 1994:54).

Because we have given up pure Jouissance, the subject receives compensatory surplus enjoyment (jouissance) from the super-ego. However, every time we give in to the demands of the super-ego and social (naturally) is not sutured, we feel even guiltier. The more we submit, the more we need to submit. This is of course very similar to the Marxist notion of surplus-value; the more you have the more you need.

The link between the super-ego and the symptom is best considered through the complementary influence of ideological fantasy in maintaining the consistency of the social. Both the super-ego and ideological fantasy act to attempt to construct the positivity of the social. The super-ego pushes the subject towards the prospect of wholeness, a reminder of Jouissance in the form of jouissance. Ideological fantasy (fantasy, the symbolic form of the imaginary, provides a backdrop for ideology) does not conceal the true, positive nature of the social, but rather presents the social as positive, a constitutive illusion that maintains the consistency of the symbolic order.

Thus both ideology and the super-ego work to domesticate the threat of the symptom. The symptom is evidence of the false relationship between the universal and the particular, the inescapable bar between the signifier and the signified. The super-ego demands that the symptom be tended to and repaired. This demand prevents the subject from uncovering the constitutive nature of the symptom. The super-ego makes the subject want to domesticate the symptom, to convince ourselves and others that it is fixable, a temporary aberration, rather than a concrete universal.

The operation of the super-ego is such that the demand of the symptom is be enjoyed; it suggests the prospect of suture, but also keeps a distance from this (impossible) fullness and hence the prospect of revealing concrete universality. Thus instead of viewing absolute poverty as the constitutive symptom of capitalist economics, we give to charity to delay our guilt. However, this is not a productive strategy for the subject or the symptom. The subject can not escape from the super-ego; the more they submit the more demands are taken on.

Herein lays the crucial link between ideological fantasy and the super-ego. Rather than taking on the demands of the super-ego to suture the social, the subject can turn to ideology and in particular, ideological fantasy. Ideological fantasy operates by externalising the cause of the symptom. The more the super-ego demands, the greater the need for ideological fantasy; however the demands of the super-ego can be avoided by transferring them into the realm of ideology.

Thus the super-ego and ideological fantasy work together to domesticate the destructive consequences of the symptom. Both show that the nature of belief is not rational, but rather belief is constructed through meanings which resonate with a particular economy of pleasure, be it from the super-ego or ideology. Thus how does one reveal the concrete universal and the true nature of the symptom? Is it possible to produce evidence that reveals the constitutive nature of the symptom? E.g. economic evidence that absolute poverty is required for western wealth. No. Rather it is at this time, as Zizek suggests in the Sublime Object of Ideology (p.49), that we will see that an ideology really has its hold.

Ideology only really has a grip when we see no distance between it and reality; ideology is reality. Thus when evidence comes up which is counter-intuitive that is when we see ideology at play. This cycle rarely leads to true action being taken. The super-ego sacrifice symbolises the fetishist nature of belief; I know this will not fix it, but all the same I believe it will.

Although the super-ego demand is more beneficial for a cause in the short-term (at least here attention is paid to the symptom), ultimately both the super-ego and ideology fail to invoke change. The super-ego prevents the subject from acting against the symptom. What is required for social change is for the phantasmatic system to be broken that presents the symptom as an impediment (using the systematic properties super-ego/ideology) and reveals it as a condition of the system.

Thus, given the forces lining up against the presented of the symptom as the concrete universal, it is difficult to conceive of the concrete universal occurs at all. However, were the symptom to be presented for what it is, the constitutive exception to the social, we would have entered the realm of concrete universality. Concrete universality is brought about by the gap that the symptom opens up. Where the symptom is the gap between the universal and the particular, concrete universality is the gap between the universal and its symptom (Zizek, 2006:30). As such it reveals the truth of the universal; the universal is failure.

The distinction here between the symptom and concrete universality is a subtle one. Where the symptom reveals the failure of the abstract universal, concrete universality takes on this failure as the true universal, providing a kind of negative suture. The ideas of a fourth element providing a suture or tying a knot is usually associated with the sinthome. Concrete universality thus shows that the failure of the universal is not an obstacle to its construction, but more accurately the very condition of its formation; it is the outside which allows the inside to form.

If we apply this theorem to capitalism, the false (abstract) universal would be the idea of capitalism as ‘natural’ and ‘objective’, the particular would be capitalism as an economic system, the symptom would be the extreme poverty it creates, and the concrete universal is the point at which capitalism encounters itself as its opposite and discovers that this poverty is not an impediment to its formation, but rather the truth of capitalism itself. As such the concrete universal allows remains as a stain on the abstract universal; it always threatens to break through and reveal itself.

Therefore, if one accepts-as is suggested in the psychoanalytic process- that this symptom is not an impediment to the fullness of the social/abstract universality, but rather a condition of its existence, then we have entered the realm of concrete universality. Thus concrete universality provides a fourth which, in a dialectically negative manner, provides a suture to the social (Zizek, 2000b:235). Thus politically, it is the element that should be identified with. Witness the recent pro-immigrations protests in America. The main banner held by the immigrant protesters was ‘We are America’. Here the protesters appeal has taken the form of concrete universality. The immigration (alien) workers have been under attack in the United States as an impediment to the fullness of the social- as a source of crime, taking jobs etc. However, what the workers are trying to suggest is that they are a necessary condition of U.S society, and should be treated as such. The workers perform a major role in taking the underclass jobs that maintain the American economy; without them the economy would fall. Therefore the immigrants are a condition, not impediment to the system. Hence the appeal ‘We are America’.

Democracy, and the democratic revolution, is a good example of concrete universality. Here the symptom of feudal societies, the problem with dealing with a multitude of demands under a single banner, was elevated from an obstacle to the fundamental principle of society (Zizek, 2000a:93-4). However, democracy has since turned into an empty signifier in itself; an abstract universal filled with meaning which are not necessarily concurrent with the democratic theme. Ultimately it is the economy which produces this distortion. Therefore it should be the economic while is the primary arena for democratic intervention. However, I do not believe that this can occur in the manner in which Laclau suggests, through chains of equivalence, even if Laclau desired anti-capitalist change, which he does not (Laclau, 2000c:206); the power of the economy is simply too strong.

Given the power of the economy, as well as ideological fantasy and the super-ego, efforts to present the symptom as such require a much radical approach; the act. Identification with concrete universality is similar to the political act, in that it suspends the symbolic law and reopens the abyss of the social. This suspension can only come from the place of the impossibility of the social; the real.

In this case I suggest that we should not view the symptom as a passive effect of hegemonic attempts at universalism, but rather a productive/destructive social force in its own right. It is only when the symptom becomes active, universal in its own right, that it is likely to become a concrete universal and pass to the act, provided that it can break up the fantasy which holds the universal to its place.

I suggest this rather that the randomness of Zizek’s political act. I believe that while such an act may be successful in a clinical sense, in the political world modifications are required. This is not to suggest that the basic formula of the act is different (to re-reveal the gap in the social; the negation of the negation of the negation), but that it need not be necessarily violent and directionless as Zizek suggests.

Yes, for political change to occur the underlying fantasy of the universal must be broken up through the act, but I believe that a post-act ideology is also required. The effectiveness of the act lies with its ability to break fantasy. Without this, the naked effect of the symptom through the trauma of the real is more likely to entrench fantasy; this entrenchment occurred in the 9/11 attacks; here the anxiety of the real did not produce a dislocatory change, but rather a repression deeper into fantasy. I believe the crucial point, is whether an alternative ideology is available onto which to transfer the anxiety of the real. The subject cannot exist in a state of trauma or dislocation; a supporting ideology, or ideologies while always be sort. This is where I believe Laclau’s work can be most productively combined with Zizek’s.

One of Laclau’s strongest, and most pertinent, criticisms of Zizek is that he holds no specific new imaginary for the Left; he simply states that he is anti-capitalist. In contrast Laclau contends that he is a pragmatist; he is not anti-capitalist, he would be happy to see the advent of a new Leftist universalism to counter the currently hegemonic right-wing ideology. This universalism would be orientated around the absorption of various Left-orientated particular demands and an ideology of contingency based around the premises of radical democracy.

Instead, Laclau emphasises the need to present a positive social imaginary for the reconstruction of society, rather than just negative demands which contrast to the existing order (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985:189). Laclau terms this the difference between a ‘strategy of opposition’ and a ‘strategy of construction of a new order’ (ibid: 189). In his opinion any strategy which takes the former route is ‘condemned to marginality’ (ibid: 189). It is this approach that Laclau attributes to Zizek, claiming that Zizek’s political critique without imaginary is simply empty talk. Laclau goes on to say that because of this emptiness, Zizek’s;

‘ thought is not organised around a truly political reflection but is, rather, a psychoanalytic discourse which draws its examples from the politico-ideological field’ (Laclau, 2000a:289)

Zizek of course rejects Laclau’s presentation of his work as politically impotent and reverses the allegation to Laclau’s resignation to partial changes within the predominant system. Zizek wants to risk the impossible, to go the act without guarantee. While this might be the most productive strategy for achieving the act (rather than being held back by fantasy), I believe that the act itself is politically ineffective if there is no alternative imaginary following it. This imaginary is not a new utopian universal, but it is a better alternative that before the act. In this case I suggest that before attempting to break up capitalism, an alternative needs to be found, an alternative that is not utopian, but rather better fits in with the democratic ethos of Laclau’s attempted universalism.

Therefore, while it is only the work of Zizek, through the identification with the symptom, concrete universality and ultimately the act that can bring the radical change required to restore the democratic ethos to the economy, the value of Laclau’s radical democratic ideology cannot be ignored. As a result, the act cannot be seen as a stand alone solution to political change. Although it is the most powerful tool in producing political change, the act is rather lacking when it comes to producing progressive change. Consequently, as well as the act, the Left does need to develop a new universal; one that fully takes integrates the economy. Although I believe that Laclau is headed in the right direction in seeking to develop this new Leftist universal, he fails to fully integrate the economy and is thus limited to accepting capitalism and making compensatory changes within the order. As well as this political limitation, theoretically, Laclau’s failure to integrate the full Lacanian apparatus, leaves his work limited, compared to Zizek’s, in understanding the fixity of the social order and the process required to dislocate it. Thus, through an integration of Laclau and Zizek, I believe a viable overall political strategy can be found. This strategy requires the Left to break up and move on from capitalism not only through the presentation of various symptoms of capitalism as concrete universals in order to produce an act, but also the Left needs to position itself as a viable ideological alternative on which society can steady itself after the trauma of the real. Without such an alternative I fear that the Left risks becoming politically impotent.

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