4. Dialectical Materialism and Universality

Universality, in both its abstract and concrete forms, is the fundamental notion for understanding political formations via Žižek’s psychoanalysis. Universality, a structural concept, is animated through Žižek’s rehabilitated concept of dialectical materialism. Here, materialism has been given a psychoanalytic spin, referring now to the obdurate negativity of objet a in the constitution of political positionality and of the jouissance that sustains such positioning. Rather than being understood only in an interpretative manner, dialectical materialism emphasises the role of the Real and jouissance in the dialectical process that constructs the universal totality. This chapter will lay out the basic parameters for dialectical thought in relation to universality, in particular Žižek’s conception of dialectical materialism, based around his notion of the ‘parallax view’. It is theorised that the concept of dialectical materiality provides a productive explanation of the political fixity encountered within the social world, both in relation to the contingent fixation of the universal imaginary as well as the hard materiality (the concrete universal) of the universal exception upon which hegemonic horizons are generated. Therefore the link between dialectical materialism and universality becomes a productive one for generating understandings of socio-political change. The perspective laid out in this chapter indicates the core theoretical orientation of this thesis. As such, it provides the foundation for the methodological position described in the following chapter and, ultimately, the psychoanalytic political approach endorsed by the thesis.

In his latest work, The Parallax View, Žižek has redeveloped a psychoanalytic concept of dialectical materialism through the notion of a ‘parallax view’. The parallax view designates a gap – the parallax gap – between two discourses, a gap that can only be perceived through a shift in positions. Žižek considers there to be several different modalities of the parallax, the most salient for this thesis being the ‘parallax of ontological difference’ and the ‘political parallax’ (Žižek, 2006a, p.11). Political parallaxes occur when there is no common ground between positions that have been structured around a social antagonism. For example, a political parallax operates between the political ‘Left’ perspectives of ecologism and global development, structured around the antagonism inherent to global capitalism. This chapter, however, will primarily focus on the parallax of ontological difference, particularly as such difference relates to the issue of universality.

The key notion here is that the parallax gap is not a gap between two discourses that are external to each other but, rather, a gap which persists within the totality of the universal. This difference which is purely internal differs from the condition of ‘external difference’ that has animated traditional dialectical thought. The internal nature of the difference, as we shall see, is vital for the materialist focus in Žižek’s of dialectical thought. However, before the parallax view and its implications for universality and social change are developed further, my argument requires that I briefly review the fundamentals of traditional dialectical thought.

An introduction to Dialectics

The basic principle of a dialectical investigation is that the key to analysis lies with discovery of the exception to the series of objects that has caught the analyst’s gaze (Žižek, 2000a, p.241). The identification of ‘the exception’ forms the major difference between the practice of formal logic, which was the primary form of philosophical logic from the Greeks to Hegel, and dialectic logic. In formalism, an identity is considered to be equal to itself; A is equal to A. This is the Law of Identity. Additionally, the formalist Law of Contradiction reasons that if A=A, A cannot be equal to non-A. Rather, contradiction is purely external; A v B. However, the formalist position assumes that identities are full in themselves, that A is solely and fully A. The dialectic response to identity is that A is both A and non-A; the exclusions that are necessary for the formation of a coherent identity mean that every conception of identity includes an element of non-identity (Kay, 2003, p.26). By taking A as solely A, we miss this necessary exception to A: non-A (Novack, 1971, p.71).
The emphasis on non-A is elemental for the dialectical materialist perspective on universality and socio-political change in particular. More specifically, the exception to the series, which always appears within the series itself, is essential for understanding the manner in which discourses come to shift. These shifts are best understood through Hegel’s approach to dialectics. According to Hegelian dialectics, that which is real is rational. Although this appears overly rationalist for psychoanalytic thought, by taking the basic idea and interpreting it through a Lacanian lens, the value of dialectics for psychoanalysis is evident. The core insight of this position for psychoanalytic dialectics, which Žižek terms dialectical materialism, is that when an identity becomes unreal (irrational), what is excluded from the identity will overthrow the identity (Novack, 1971, p.87). To re-write this in Žižek’s terms, the weight of the abstract universal’s symptom becomes unbearable when it cannot be domesticated within the symbolic and fantasmatic resources available, causing that universal imaginary to become dislocated from within.

It was Hegelian dialectical thought which lead Marx to contend that capitalism had become so irrational that the working class had historical reason and right on its side (Novack,1971, p.88). What Marx did not consider, however, was capitalism’s ability to revolutionise its own symptoms by bringing them back into the universal horizon. Conversely, capitalism’s ability to internalise its limits has not stopped symptoms from occurring. Symptoms, as with a universal identity, are a relentless threat to capitalism. The constant presence of such symptoms in capitalism has lead Adorno (cited in Žižek, 2006a, p.51) to describe capitalism as a system that lives on credit that will never be paid off, in the sense that global capital is constantly able to revolutionize its own negative conditions.

Capital domesticates its symptoms in two ways. The most common and efficient manner, as has been noted, is to internalise symptoms. The internalisation of symptoms regularly occurs by acknowledging the symptom, but domesticating its effect through fantasy constructions. This method is an example of a rotational-style revolution. Although there may appear to be regular change, this change moves around a fixed central axis. This axis is the Real. This is the case with capitalism and its symptoms. However, some symptoms are unable to be domesticated through the act of simply being acknowledged. These symptoms lie at the core of a discursive structure; they are the Real around which the discourse rotates. As such, these kinds of symptoms, like the unsustainability of capitalism or global poverty, have to be disavowed from the universal horizon, such as global capitalism,in order for it to continue operating. It is only by getting at the heart of the system, so to speak, to the core, disavowed elements, that thorough-going radical change can occur.
Threats to capital such as these, however, are strongly disavowed, such is the anxiety that comes with acknowledging them and the jouissance available from within the capitalist edifice. Instead, capital operates by bringing the symptoms which can be acknowledged back into the system, albeit in a different form. A contemporary illustration of this dialectical process within capitalism, wherein threats to the system are constantly integrated back into the system, is the digital revolution. Digital technology poses a major threat to two of the main pillars of capitalism; private property and the scarcity of resources. Contemporary capitalist discourse, however, has long battled against these symptoms but instead now seeks to include them within its horizons. Although some forms of capitalist discourse try to repress these symptoms – in the case of Napster, for example (a digital file sharing internet site) being taken to court –others embrace the change and seek to profit from it. Thus several mainstream music or digital technology companies, such as Sony and Apple, now operate web-sites that distribute music either free (and profit from advertising) or for a minimal cost. What was once a threat to the very heart of capitalism – the pursuit of private profit – is now an opportunity to generate profit.


From reflection to concrete universality

According to Hegel, there are three stages to the dialectic: reflection, external reflection and determinate reflection (Kay, 2003, p.19). Within the condition of reflection, an identity is posited in itself, because it is assumed to be fully identical with itself. In terms of the individual, reflection can be conceived of as the human substance before it entered the symbolic realm. Upon entry into the symbolic order, however, substance is negated by the symbolic Other and becomes ‘subject’, thereby losing access to Jouissance. The condition of reflection, like Jouissance, is always only a fantasy, a retroactive construction of what has been lost through external reflection; the fantasy being that there was something present to lose (Jouissance).

Reflection is an important stage because it allows one to think of the process of external reflection as a negation of reflection, rather than as a starting point for analysis. External reflection is considered to occur when an identity is negated by an object outside of itself. External reflection introduces lack into the symbolic system. This lack, R2, occurs because of the lack of J1, which the subject is believed to hold before the external negation by the symbolic order. This belief is sustained by fantasy.

That same fantasy prevents the subject from entering the third stage of the dialectical movement, determinate reflection; the negation of the negation. This negation is known as determinate reflection. Determinate reflection does not produce a change in content, but rather a reconception of the negation that occurs through external reflection (Kay, 2003, p.37). Rather than being perceived as a negative limit, this negation is reconstituted as a positive condition (Žižek, 2002, p.36).

The philosophical concept of Truth illustrates what is at stake in the dialectical process. In modernism, it was held that, through reason, humankind could have unmediated access to the Truth. Truth itself was never found in modernism, this simply reflects the fantasy of reflection that is at work. The modernist perspective was negated by forms of late-modernist or post-modernist thought, which reasoned that Truth was impossible for the subject because its access to reality is always mediated by language. The relativistic dismissal of Truth which such positions imply has, in turn, been negated by perspectives such as Lacanian psychoanalysis. Thus, the ‘failure’ that occurred to the idea of Truth, upon discovery of the mediation of reality by discourse, becomes a positive condition of Truth; Truth is possible, but only in this mediated form – there is no Truth outside of the historical contingency of thought.

Žižek’s Dialectical Materialism

The negation of the universal by the particular is fundamental for Žižek’s dialectical materialism (Žižek, 2002, p.43). This negation informs the ontological impossibility of a universal identity that is without lack. However, because of the prospect for jouissance, in both the forms of J1 and J2, the negation in external reflection produces the après-coup construction of the abstract universal which negates this lack. Likewise the negation of reflection creates the conditions of possibility for a radical shift in positions relative to concrete universality. To understand the possibilities for such a shift, our argument must do more to understand the negation of the negation, that is, the process of determinate reflection.

External reflection is the stage within which reflection is itself negated, overcome. However, psychoanalytic thought shows that reflection is always-already negated. This state of negation-that-has-already-happened lies in the subject’s ‘castration’ (separation from Jouissance), which is associated with its entrance into the symbolic realm. Thus we need to distinguish between two separate, but very related meanings of the negation of the negation. This division relates to the distinction that Žižek makes between negativity (the Real) within the symbolic order (R2) and the negativity upon which the symbolic order is based (R1). For Žižek, it is the materiality of R1 that is primary (this makes his position a materialist one) rather than the idealism of a position founded on the primacy of R2 (R. Butler, 2005, p.95). The distinction between the materialist position on the Real and the idealist perspective also separates Laclau and Žižek. Where Laclau considers the Real to be the limit to every symbolic formation and thus as a lack within the symbolic order, Žižek argues that the Real is also an excess to the social, saturating it with jouissance. The first negation of the negation is thus structurally based, relating to the condition of determinate reflection. In determinate reflection, the negation that occurs to the universal by the particular in the process of external reflection is, itself, negated: that is, negation is viewed as a positive condition of the universal.

The second type of ‘negation of the negation’ relates back to castration. Castration is the initial negation, but this negation is itself negated through its repression in fantasy (Kay, 2003, p.33). The two negations of negations are vitally related. In dialectical materialism, we see that, in reflection, whatever it is that we perceive is the product of a prior condition of negation: ‘the thing’ has already been negated by the operation upon it by the symbolic order. The subject’s entry into the symbolic is never completed, however, and their disjointedness with that order provides the means through which the process of negation moves beyond the state of external negation to that of determinate negation: the subject’s inhabitation of the symbolic order is always dislocated by an excess of jouissance and by the Real. That said, the subject is also driven to get back to the original, but mythical, state of Jouissance. As we have previously noted, J1 is only an imaginary concept, it is the creation of J2.This drive to return to J1 constitutes the negation of the negation in its fullest, psychoanalytic meaning, the repression of the fact that we never had ‘it’ in the first place. As a consequence of this turn, psychoanalysis suggests that a third stage – a further negation – can be added to ‘the negation of the negation’.

The ‘negation of the negation of the negation’, is concrete universality. This third term is necessary to designate the possibility of going beyond the fantasmatic supplement that prevents the subject from perceiving the concrete universal upon which the abstract universal is founded. This synthesis of the two concepts of ‘the negation of negation’ allows analysis to go past the purely interpretive arena. To summarise this synthesis, we see that any identity is negated in itself, but the very fact of this primordial lack is negated in fantasy. Fantasy instead presents lack as having been caused by an external obstacle, such as occurs through processes of external reflection. The construction of such fantasies support the production of an abstract universal imaginary from which subjects gain access to jouissance.

We see this external concept of antagonism in operation in Laclau’s early work (see the previous chapter) but also in everyday political ideology, where the identity of one faction is thought to be prevented by that of another. What this perspective fails to acknowledge is that it is not the Other which is preventing the full expression of identity but, rather, that this failure is internal to the identity. This is why Žižek is so condescending towards identity politics; they are a false politics which ignore more pressing concerns, notably the contemporary manifestation of the Real at the heart of the symbolic order; global capital and its affect on humanity. In the process of negating ‘the negation of the negation’, the fantasy which portrays the secondary negation (the symptom) as being an external, alien cause of social discord is deconstructed: the cause of discord does not simply lie with a foreign force. This deconstruction the possibility to emerge of a political reconfiguration, as the unconscious supplement which has held together the abstract universal looses its grip upon subjects.

Determinate Reflection and Concrete Universality

Determinate reflection is the most influential phase for inducing change within a universal. In determinate reflection, it is revealed that the second negation, rather than being an impediment to the universal (e.g. we have not quite achieved a notion of universal human rights, but we are getting there as we attempt to incorporate notions of collective –- economic, cultural and social –rights within liberal human rights frameworks), is rather the condition of the universal’s ability to generate social consensus. In that process, the subject comes to recognise the element of non-identity that structures the appearance of reality, the ‘exclusion’ within universality of that which does not correspond with itself, and identifies with that split. The act of identifying with both the universal and its exception generally provokes strong anxiety (although various defence methods, discussed in chapter five) emerge to allow this paradoxical identification to proceed. Because of the anxiety that is experienced through the process of determinate reflection, the universal loses its grip upon the subject. That subject is then able to reconsider their own (contingent, political) configuration.

In the process of external reflection, the negation of reflection that occurs (that is, of the symptom) is domesticated by being constructed in fantasy. This allows the abstract universal to function in a normal manner. In the move to determinate reflection, however, a radical shift in emphasis occurs from the abstract universal to the concrete universal. This shift in emphasis sees the symptom emerging as a necessary, constitutive element of the totality that is universality, the symptom becoming both the ‘concrete singular exception’ of the abstract universal and ‘a universality’ in itself which exceeds the conceptual grid of the existing framework (Kay, 2003, p.42). As a consequence, this impediment to the realisation of universal fullness, the symptom/concrete universal, holds the Truth of the universal in its totality (Žižek, 1999, p.180-181). A principle of analysis that follows from this is to refrain from comparing the universal with what it seeks to represent (e.g. by asking Are these really universal human rights?), but rather with that which the abstract universal excludes in order to constitute itself; the concrete universal (Žižek, 2002, p.160).
Posited in this manner, concrete universality is the ‘constitutive outside’ of the universal dialectic. It holds the inherent Truth of the abstract universal imaginary; what has to be excluded in order for the universal to be constituted. Both Laclau and Žižek use the notion of the constitutive outside, and it is worth considering these alternative conceptions in order to better illustrate the internal, as opposed to external, nature of the concrete universal, which, through the dialectical movement, opens up further possibilities for political change.

Laclau considers;
We must assert that a discourse, or a discursive formation, establishes its limits by means of excluding a radical otherness that has no common measure with the differential system from which it is excluded and that therefore poses a constant threat to the system. (Laclau, 1995, p.151)
Laclau’s conception of the constitutive outside, however, varies significantly from Žižek’s. For Laclau, the only thing that the excluded elements have in common is that they are excluded from the universal; thus they are external. In contrast, Žižek’s notion of concrete universality refers to a condition where the excluded elements stand in the place of, and constitute a state of, ‘minimal difference’ between the universal and itself; the excluded elements are paradoxically within the species yet subversive of it. Thus, while Laclau would agree that the relation between the universal and its constitutive outside is not the formalist relation of A→ B, he postulates it as A→anti-A (Torfing, 1999, p.125). In contrast, Žižek claims that concrete universality is not anti-A, but rather non-A. The dialectical interactions of A and non-A within universality form the basis of Žižek’s parallax view.
The Parallax View

An ontological parallax (as opposed to a political parallax, as introduced at the beginning of this chapter) brings together the concepts of universality and the dialectic within a psychoanalytic conception of materialism. The key notion here is that universality is split internally between the abstract universal and the concrete universal, that split forming around a ‘parallax gap’. The parallax gap is the gap that persists between two closely associated perspectives, between which no common ground is possible, the gap only being viewable through the shift between positions. This gap, to add another gloss to it, is the parallax Real (Žižek, 2006a, p.4). The two sides that make up the moment of universality, the abstract universal and the concrete universal, constitute the basis of the ontological parallax, these two forms of universality being made up of incommensurable discourses that are held together by a condition of ‘minimal difference’ that persists between them. Žižek states that this incommensurability, rather than providing an obstacle to the dialectical movement (because of the lack of a common language), actually fuels the subversive political core of dialectics because it allows for not only small change but, rather, large structural shifts (p.4).


The division that occurs to the universal around the parallax Real – between its abstract and concrete expressions – is not symmetrical. Relatively symmetrical divisions can be found around social antagonisms, as identified within political parallaxes. Alternatively, in the ontological parallax the universal is divided into its abstract and concrete forms, the abstract universal being the hegemonic imaginary through which the apparently coherence of social life gets constructed. The abstract universal is built upon the effects of the imaginary and upon ideological fantasy to negate the negation that is inherent to the symbolic order. It offers the prospect of fullness and of Jouissance. The universal horizon pacifies the disruptive effects of the Real by targeting the various manifestations of the Real that occur in discourse, particularly the symptom.

The Role of the Symptom

The symptom is a modality in which we experience the Real insofar as it is the point at which abstract universals – like national identity, human rights, and so on – fail. This point of failure reveals the existence of an irresolvable (parallax) gap within a universal discourse and, thus, ultimately, the presence of a concrete universal that is disrupting the coherence of that universalising horizon. It is not so much the symptom itself that is Real, but rather the gap that the symptom opens up between itself and the abstract universal. This gap reveals the existence of an element which subverts the universal horizon and, as such, is a form in which the Real is staged, creating the potential for dislocation. Yet, where the symptom comes to be symbolised and constructed in the fantasy-language of the abstract universal that is framing subjects’ perceptions of the situation, it loses this Real element and with it the threat of dislocation. This domestication occurs because the symptom, once symbolised through the various mechanisms of fantasy (see Chapter 5), becomes part of the abstract universal itself and, as such, a potential source of enjoyment (jouissance). Where this occurs, the gap that exists between the symptom and the abstract universal appears to dissipate. The symptom does not, however, disappear. Fantasy constructions never fully succeed. Rather the symptom continues to exist as an excessive element (as an irrepressible remnant of the Real) within the universalising discourse. The presence of the symptom, and the repressed Real that is inherent to it, continually threaten to return so as to dislocate the cogency of the universalising discourse.

If the symptom persists as a ‘stain’ on the universal imaginary, then concrete universality can be said to be the original source of this stain (Žižek, 1999, p.113; 2006a, p.31). In this sense, the concrete universal is the Real element around which the universal rotates and it is the symptom that represents the concrete universal within the abstract universal. The symptom plays this role by operating within the universal as the one element that does not fit, but upon whose presence the universal depends for its coherence. Here Žižek gives the example of ‘freedom’ as it appears within the universal aspirational horizon of capital. Within the logic of capital there exists one definition of freedom that subverts the reasonableness of all the others; the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market. The various social freedoms that citizens of a liberal state enjoy depend upon the loss of economic freedom. To this end, the freedom to sell one’s labour constitutes all the other elemental ‘freedoms’ normally associated with democracy. Without this conception of freedom, the others would not be able to exist (Žižek, 1989, p.21-3).
Thus it is around the symptom that the stability/instability of a discourse depends. To the extent that the symptom is able to be successfully integrated into the fantasy of the abstract universal then that universal horizon is able to maintain its regular functions. If however, the symptom refuses to be pacified by the terms of the dominant universal and domesticated into a norm or rule of a particular political community it offers the prospect, through determinate reflection, of a shift occurring whereby concrete universality becomes visible. However, the unconscious supplement which maintains the status of the abstract universal is a particularly powerful force, because of the prospect of Jouissance that it offers. Conversely, because J1 is impossible, the fantasmatic element of the abstract universal offers subjects J2, to enjoy, accessed through the symptom in much the same manner as they might enjoy hating the presence of an external antagonism, of an alien intruder (as discussed in chapter three). Thus, rather than impeding the fullness of the social/abstract universality, the symptom is a necessary condition for its existence: it is highly disruptive, yes, but nevertheless necessary because through it the abstract occludes its inability to obtain fullness.

Because of the necessary, yet disruptive effect, of the symptom in and upon the abstract universal, a multitude of different perspectives are generated in order to domesticate the dislocating effect of the Real that is inherent to the symptom. These symbolic perspectives depend upon the manner in which a discourse establishes itself in relation to the symptom. The most basic defensive techniques that ensure that the symptom (and thus the discursive position) can function while being disavowed are those of repression, a domesticating acknowledgement (through mechanisms of antagonism, of ideology and of super-ego demand), and of fetishism. We will consider each of these modes of responding to the symptom in the following chapter. In doing so, a methodology will be generated for understanding the manner in which the symptom operates within the domain of abstract universality. This methodology will be constructed with a view to considering the possibilities for radical structural change, change that moves outside of the fantasmatic relationship that, under ‘normal’ social conditions, persists between the symptom and the abstract universal, and which thereby exposes the concrete universal. As such, the methodology informs the core political orientation of the thesis, that of practicing concrete universality by revealing the constitutive materialist Truth embodied by the concrete universal.