Environmental edit/ structural changes

Increasingly I have come to the conclusion that it is Zizek’s work that is informing my thesis, rather than Laclau’s. So much so that a debate between the two in the thesis, as planned previously, is probably unnecessary. Rather I believe that the two complement each other. If I was to go further and try suggest a new positive form of politics, this is where I believe that Laclau has the advantage. This is not, however, my aim. Instead I believe that the differences and similarities between the two can be best used, as Glyn Daly suggests(Daly, 1999), in a complementary manner. Zizek certainly provides the big picture for me; symptoms, the concrete universal, enjoyment and fantasy. However, Zizek lacks a certain subtly that Laclau provides when discussing the plurality of discourses which operate around a fundamental lack. It is in this role that I believe Laclau’s work will be most useful.

This is not to suggest that I will take on the work of Laclau and Zizek in a purely uncritical fashion. Indeed, the best criticisms of the work of each comes from the other, but rather the division between Laclau and Zizek will no longer form the key debate within the thesis. At this stage I envisage that the core debate will be the possibility of radical economic change through a psychoanalytic analysis. Thus the thesis will review but the possibilities of anti-capitalist change, as well as the productiveness of the psychoanalytic critique, as represented by Zizek and Laclau. Therefore the strengths and weaknesses of Zizek and Laclau will certainly be debated, and definitely in terms of each other, but not as theoretical alternatives. I feel that such an analysis would simply be two one-sided in favour of Zizek. It is no longer feasible for me to talk about whether I am searching for symptoms (Zizek) or dislocations (Laclau). I am doing both, but in the terms of the former.

That said, I do still think that my last chapter lacked a Laclauian analysis, which would be very useful. More than anything I think that this is because I haven’t quite worked out what position I will take on Laclau. I think that perhaps after this chapter I will have to briefly return to his work and add a Laclauian analysis to the two chapters I will have written, before returning to my discussions/conclusions.

That’s the plan anyway, now it is time to just wait for it to fall apart while I try to fulfil it!

On a more serious note, I feel that it is now a good time to note some of the additions that I feel I need to make to the previous chapter, most of which came out of the discussions at our last supervision meeting, others which have cropped up in the past week or so when I have been studying poverty. These will obviously grow as I go further into the thesis, in particular in relation to the conclusions I come up with in this chapter and in my theoretical methodology.

As part of my acknowledgement of my Zizekian orientation, I have been thinking more openly about discourses in relation to symptoms. This is based around the thought that discourses within a discursive realm revolve around their relationship to theReal, the ever-changing limits within the discursive. As I will extend on in my next blog entry on the basic structure of the poverty chapter, I think that discourses can be classified in the following fashion;
- Discourses which disavowal the symptom
o The symptom is ignored; climate change is not occurring. In the environmental chapter this would be Promethean discourse
- Discourses which recognise the symptom, but particularise it
o These discourses are by far the most common, and as such contextually they create a variety of sub-categories; Ecological modernism recognises the symptom in a different manner from Economic Rationalism. Here the insights of Laclau are useful in the manner in which meanings are constituted and altered.
- Excluded discourses
o Islam in capitalism is an example of this. Technicality it is not a symptom, because it is not within the capitalist universal; its status is that of exclusion, again an area into which Laclau brings insight. These excluded discourses are not the Real, they are firmed constructed and fully acknowledged in the universal symbolic, but they are constitutively excluded for the stability of the discourse. As such they provide an alternative source of meanings, but as long as they are not attached to any symptomatic excess of the universal, they will simply remain excluded.
- Discourses revealing the symptom
o These discourses, of which my work is an example, reveal symptoms, but still come from an outsider’s position. They have potential to break open a space for the symptom and create change, but it is not optimal strategy for change. They have a greater potential to be excluded as irrational or to simply domesticate and particularise the symptom by describing them within the universal terms.

I did not develop this category of discourse very strongly in the last chapter, or even distinguish it from excluded discourses; there is an important difference between ecocentric green radicals and anthropocentric economic green radicals like eco-Marxists. I will have to return to this distinction at a later date, because I think that it is a vital one.

- Discourses from the symptom
o This is where I believe that the greatest potential for change lies. Discourses of this category are literally discourses of the Real that have been symbolised in their own terms, and as such come in the same category as effects of the real. This symbolic aspect was lacking in environmentalism. The effect of the real exists in the actions of nature. This was not a point I took on with much subtly, and will expand on further below.
o Essentially, these discourses are of the Real, from the viewpoint of the universal. This is poverty in its own terms. In the western capitalist potential, we see this poverty, but it is discursively constructed in order to domesticate its real elements; we cannot truly face it. These discourses however, come from those elements that have been excluded. I believe that it is when these discourses become active in themselves, not in the terms of the Other, that really start to put pressure on the universal, in much the same way that climate change effects environmental discourse.
o Of course, as we saw with environmental discourse, as more pressure is put on, there is a protective and domesticating response from the universal. Therefore it is not good enough to simply operate within the symptom. This will prompt a variety of different actions. For example, a strong antagonistic position is more likely to produce anxiety and war than radical change. Instead the symptom should occupy the position of the concrete universal, as in an example that I have given previously ‘We are America’

That is the basic theoretical changes I believe I should make, as I have shown, to a degree, in the examples I have given there is not much change required in the environmental chapter, just a slight re-orientation around a couple of topics. I will also extend on these discursive categories in the next entry, my first on poverty.

The biggest change in content I believe I should make in the environmentalist chapter revolves around Peak Oil. Oil is constitutive of the capitalist system and is a good example of both ecological collapse, although in a less fatalistic manner, and concrete universality; the hidden truth of capitalism (its limits) becomes constitutive. There is a lot of discourse around Peak oil from a variety of positions and I believe that it will be very useful to use it as a running example throughout the chapter, leading to an ultimate conclusion of the possibilities of concrete universality. However, I do not think I should develop this further now, but rather wait until I fully revisit the chapter.

Other smaller areas to be expanded on come from Zizek’s article Eastern European Liberalism and its Discontents. Here Zizek makes some interesting notes on how positions outside capitalism are taken as irrational (p.27), such as Green Radicalism, and the need for a new universal outside of capitalism, such as ecology (p.29).

Daly, G. (1999). Politics and the Impossible: Beyond Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction. Theory, Culture and Society, 16(4), 75-98.