Core Questions

My previous thesis statement included within it a substantial debate around the possibilities of solidifying change. It was here that I found Laclau to have a strength above Zizek in Laclau's conception of Radical democracy. This is time, however, I have come further to Zizek's perspective, not so much in that their is no need for ideology or politics, but rather that this is not important for the task which I am trying to achieve.

This got me thinking; What are the core questions around which this thesis operates? How am I going to justify the positions I have taken ? and Do I need this element of politics in what is essentially a debate around the political?

The justification of my core anti-capitalist orientation is perhaps the most difficult element for me. The thesis is both implicitly and explicitly anti-capitalist. But from the position that I am speaking it is difficult to justify such a normative position, at least with any guarantee. The position that I have taken myself on this is that there is simply no universal support for what I am doing, I have no fall back. Instead I have to assume responsibility for my position, knowing very well that there is no universal fallback.

At the same time, however, I am very reluctant to take a purely relativistic position; I think this is dishonest; it is clear that my argument orientates very strongly against capital. I am not, however, wanting to get into a drawn out argument over the normative ethics of capital. Such a debate could be the subject of an entire thesis and would necessary not come to a 'final' position.

Instead, I think the only option is to be upfront about my position, and as Grant has suggested, invite the reader to take a similar position;

' Invite the reader to consider if capitalism was to be broken up, how could this occur? Thus I do not seek to solve a 'real' problem, but look at the problem 'awry', from what Zizek's terms a 'short circuit approach and see if the problem can be redefined'

The critique of capitalism informs the key questions of the thesis. In trying to break from the grip of global capital, this thesis seeks to debate possibilities for change and mechanisms for stability through a psychoanalytic lens. In doing so a methodology will be created predominately from the work of Zizek, following from Lacan, Hegel, Marx and Ernesto Laclau. This methodology will be examined by means of two particular areas of discourse; environmentalism and poverty.

This is a double change from what I was 1st hoping to achieve. Initally I had the duel aims of reviewing Laclau and Zizek's work to see which worked better and also to come up with a political solution of sorts. Now I have dropped the need for a positive political solution and instead am looking for ways to redefine problems through the application of psychoanalytic theory to the realm of the political ( following Stavrakakis' distinction between politics and the political).

I am also not looking so much to review Laclau and Zizek's work, but develop it through my own individual context. Thus I use Zizek's basic theoretical apparatus plus a few of my own developments and Laclau's more subtle approach to discourse analysis. As well as these two main contributors, I look to utilise insights from Stavrakakis, Daly, Fink and Torfing as well as background insights from Lacan, Hegel and Marx, whose work to different degrees implicitly informs this thesis via Zizek.

To change course somewhat, I have spent the last week or so involved more with theoretical issues, particularly from Zizek's 'Parallax View', which has intrigued me. As such I have not spent as much time as on poverty discourse as I imagined. Therefore, rather than fully completing the poverty chapter, I think it may be wiser to simply seek to find examples of poverty discourses and lay them out.

In this analysis, I will seek to identify the examples used, metaphors, empty signifiers, nodal points, limits, antagonisms, symptoms and the underlying fantasy involved. Thus rather than write a full, theoretically informed chapter, I would like to find as much of the raw material as possible and leave it at that. I want to do this for two reasons. Firstly, I do not think that I have enough time to do a full chapter justice in the next week. Secondly, I feel I have made some theoretical advances, some of which I outlined in the last entry, some of which come from the Parallax view, which I will write about soon.

Therefore I think it is better that after my poverty discourse review, I re-develop my methodology, which as I have noted in this entry, has altered since I last developed it. In particular I would like redefine the relationship between Laclau and Zizek, which involves editing out a lot of the debate around radical democracy ( if not the issues around the necessity of ideology) and developing Laclau's role in completing Zizek in this analysis. This role particularly involves empty signifiers, social antagonism and dislocation. All three of which I will have to redefine, the later from a previous blog entry, the former will be informed from my thoughts on the 'Parallax View' .

More importantly perhaps, I need to recentre the methodology section around the symptom, as per the position I have recently developed. Zizek's notion of the 'Parallax Real', which corresponds to my view, as well as other dialectical insights will also be included.

After I have re-reviewed the methodology section, I hope to re-examine and further develop the poverty chapter, as well as environmentalism. This will hopefully lead the way to a development, in a concluding chapter of sorts, or some kind of recommendation, along the classic Leftist/Leninist line of 'What is to be done?'. This will touch on the possibilities of a form of politics exposed to psychoanalytic thought, or alternatively an anti-capitalist ideology. More important perhaps is the combination of environmental and poverty discourses and the resulting paradoxical position, that once again is best described as a 'parallax'.