5. Symptomatic Readings

The symptom is element that links the two areas of interest to psychopolitical analysis: the abstract universal imaginary and the concrete universal. The abstract universal stablises, via jouissance, what are otherwise contingent and inconsistent discourses. In contradistinction, the concrete universal is that which must be excluded in order for the various elements that make up a universal imaginary to be condensed into a whole. As such, the concrete universal represents the material Truth of the universal totality; in terms of the hegemonic horizon, the concrete universal is the unbearable example which the universal cannot face about itself. It is, to rephrase the point, the Real. Within the abstract universal, the symptom embodies the universal exception and, thus, the Real. As such, the domestication of this potentially dislocating element is vital for the smooth functioning of the abstract universal. Such domestication involves a range of different strategies. These strategies can appear to be evidence of social change, but instead they are a ‘revolution’ around a fundamental impossibility, that impossibility being the concrete universal. Yet, despite the disturbing presence of the symptom, its existence is still necessary for the universal horizon to function. The symptom sustains a distance between, on the one hand, the universal imaginary and, on the other, the contradiction that exists between the fantasies that make the social domain appear coherent and full and the dislocation of those fantasies by the Real. The symptom thus creates an irresolvable gap between within the universal, a gap that itself reveals the presence of the Real. Thus whilst symptoms are enjoyed, their staging of the Real also causes anxiety and dislocation.

For political positions that seek to achieve radical structural shifts, different strategies can be utilised in relation to the symptom and, in particular, the concrete universal. Two strategies are particularly effective. The first involves the identification of the gaps within universal horizons, like national identity, globalisation, and so on, that get opened up by the symptom. The second engages the concrete universal in the terms that are given by various hegemonic universal imaginaries, but within a conception of the universal that goes beyond those imaginaries, that instead embraces the notion of totality.

This chapter develops a methodology for investigating the different discursive strategies that variously get used in the management of symptoms. The most conservative of these are sets of strategies that include the symptom within the terms of existing abstract universals. Beyond this though, the methodology identifies sets of strategy that use the ideas of the symptom to point-point the form which the concrete universal is taking within a discursive structure and, thus, in Žižek’s terms, to practice concrete universality. This approach to methodology does not aim to develop a reified procedure for examining political formations but, rather, suggests a formatic method that can be performed.

By formatic, I mean an analysis that does not simply stay at the level of interpretation. The core aim of this methodology is to produce an approach which both identifies the symptomatic point within a discourse and the underlying fantasmatic strategy used to domesticate these symptoms. It also goes further than this in examining the potential strategies that could potentially be used to deconstruct the abstract universal.

In constructing this methodology, the chapter concentrates on two separate areas. The first focuses on the manner in which symptoms are contained by the abstract universal such that they do not produce a shift to the concrete universal. This can happen in one of two ways. The first involves a repression of the symptom. The second, more effective strategy, involves an acknowledgement, but domestication of the Real within the symptom. Understanding the manner in which a universal horizon protects itself from the symptom is vital for comprehending the manner in which the symptom can be used as a political tool for contesting the hegemonic status of a universal horizon such as global capitalism. The latter part of the chapter focuses on this latter task, reviewing the manner in which symptoms can be utilised to reveal the presence of the concrete universal and to produce radical social change. Again, this can be approached in two ways: by acknowledging the presence of the concrete universal using the terms given by the abstract universal; and by registering the social effects of discourses that emerge from within the concrete universal itself. It is to these tasks that we shall now turn.

Repression of the SymptomThe first discursive strategy to be discussed relates to the repression of the symptom. All discourses within the abstract universal operate with a degree of repression, in that each represses the fact that social fullness is impossible (Stavrakakis, 1999, p.39). As such, a certain repression of the symptom is the condition of possibility for the construction of the abstract universal. When we talk of discursive strategies as a response to the symptom, all of these strategies operate as modalities of repression. However, in this methodology we shall distinguish between this form of repression and a more direct form of repression where the very existence of the symptom is repressed. This type of repression is known as secondary repression, where a signifier is excluded from the symbolic, as opposed to primary repression which relates to castration and the original constitution of the unconscious (Evans, 1996, p.165). Additionally, within Lacanian psychoanalytic thought there is a vital distinction between repression and a term often used in conjunction with repression, disavowal. Repression and disavowal are different defence mechanisms for dealing with trauma, such as the trauma of the Real that gets experienced in encounters with symptoms. Lacan uses disavowal in terms of the structure of perversion, where the subject simultaneously disavows and acknowledges the symptom. This is a process of fetishism, to which we shall soon return (Evans, 1996, p.43-4).

In contrast to the condition of disavowal, repression is the process where a signifier or discourse is expelled from the conscious into the unconscious. This expulsion is never complete, in that the symptomatic signifier does not disappear, but rather continues to operate within the unconscious realm. Because it functions within the unconscious, the repressed symptom continues to effect the subject by taking symbolic form and, as such, perpetual efforts are made to contain the symptom given its traumatic effects. Repression often occurs when the threat of dislocation is high because the symptom cannot be included within the universal imaginary through which the subject, or social formation, is organising itself. This has most often occurred in totalitarian societies, where society is considered to be complete. In contrast to free-market societies, where the abstract universal imaginary may emphasise wealth and freedom, the most prominent aspect of the abstract universal of totalitarian societies is unity and solidarity. Therefore elements of non-unity in totalitarian societies are treated in a different manner from societies in which unity is not such a strong ideal. Because of the strong libidinal investment in this unity, the stability of society is entirely dependent on the repression or extermination of the symptom. Thus repression and antagonism often operate together because of the need to exterminate the fantasied external cause of the symptom. Indeed, these antagonism are themselves generated by the abstract universal through the positing, and then repression, of an element deemed alien in order to maintain the abstract universal. This often occurs in a violent manner such as, for example, the Tiananmen square massacre of 1989. The treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany is another seminal example of this strategy for managing the social symptom.
This is not to suggest that non-totalitarian societies do not use repression as a discursive strategy against the symptom. Many discourses within capitalism actively repress symptoms of global capital, such as climate change and absolute poverty. Conversely numerous capitalist discourses acknowledge these symptoms, not as a concrete universal that exceeds the abstract universal, but rather acknowledges their presence by constructing them in fantasy. Recent examples of such fantasy structures are the block-buster movies on climate change. These discursive strategies are used when the symptom can no longer be repressed because of the pressure the symptom is placing on the symbolic order through the unconscious. Paradoxically though, an acknowledgment of the symptom is also functional for an abstract universal in order for distance to be maintained from the impossibility of ‘society’. It is to these strategies that we now turn.

Acknowledgement of the Symptom in fantasyThe symptom is unavoidable; it is a constitutive element of the social. Nonetheless, the gap opened up by the symptom can be avoided and, with it, the Real effect of the symptom. The gap that is opened by the symptom is sutured by the reconstruction of the symptom in some fantasy form. By constructing the symptom in fantasy the symptom itself does not disappear, rather its effect is tamed. Instead of it being a source of anxiety, of trauma, and of dislocation, the symptom as it appears within fantasy becomes a source of jouissance for the subject. The symptom is a site of enjoyment because it allows the subject to express the negativity, the lack, which is inherent to the social. In this sense the symptom corresponds with the role played by objet a, the cause of an impossible desire for fullness. The symptom, as an element of the Real, opens up a gap within the social – much like objet a does as the cause of desire.

The process of attempting to fill that gap generates jouissance. If the gap were to be completed filled, the symptom totally sutured by ‘the Truth about the situation’, then the subject would be faced with the full, naked, negativity of the social. Thus the symptom is maintained, albeit at a distance, within fantasy.

Several different devices exist within fantasy to accomplish the paradoxical task of acknowledging, yet domesticating, the symptom, so as to avoid the potential dislocation that comes with the active presence of the concrete universal. Each gives rise to a peculiar form of discourse. These include ideological fantasy, external antagonism, super-ego demand, disavowal, and fetishism. We shall discuss each in turn.
Ideological Fantasy

Ideology and fantasy are the main drivers through which the symptom is, firstly, acknowledged and, then, domesticated. Together they build the subject’s sense of social and psychic coherence, belonging to the Lacanian register of the imaginary. Fantasy, a modality of the imaginary, provides an unconscious supplement of jouissance which acts as the base for the operation of ideology. This operation is known as ideological fantasy, the discursive strategy by which jouissance (J2) is obtained through the fantasmatic postulating about the possibility of J1. This possibility relies on ideological fantasy externalising the symptomatic elements which threaten the abstract universal, but also the maintenance of these symptoms.

The reconstruction of the concept of ideology has been a vital move in psychoanalytic thought. Ideology is one of the most debated concepts in the history of social science (c.f. Thompson, 1990) and, as such, the full genealogy of the concept does not need to be covered here. Ideology is a critical concept for the rehabilitation of universality within Žižekian psychoanalysis. Ideology had been predominately presented in modernist thought as distinct from ‘reality’ in the sense that it was an illusionary appearance as opposed to essence, at which modernism was driving. For this reason, with the advent of post-structuralist thought and the related post-modern journey into relativism, ideology as a concept was rejected (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.118-122). Through an operation of determinate reflection, in which the very negation of ideology has become the positive condition for its rehabilitation, Lacanian theory has transcended these definitions of ideology and has rekindled the term. Ideology stills operates as misrecognition, but of a different nature as the domain of ideology is transferred from the epistemological (the truth value of a representation of the social) to the ontological (Glynos, 2001, p.192). Rather than it signaling the existence of a distinction between reality and ideology, ideology is now seen through psychoanalytic eyes as the guarantor of consistency in the social realm; there is no reality without ideology. Because all discourses are ultimately dislocated and lacking, ideology plays the role of covering this lack, and hence occluding the politically contingent nature of any such ideological construction (p.191). Thus, through ideology the subject misrecognises the ontologically negative basis of the social as being a positive, coherent foundation (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.123).The key role of ideology in the construction of normality, it can thus be surmised, is to include and pacify the symptom through its staging of the symptom within fantasy formations to which the subject holds. It is the symptom that disrupts the consistency of the social and, thus, the presence of the symptom must be negated (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.128). Paradoxically, in order to achieve this, the symptom must be included in the ideological fantasies through which subjects experience their abstract universals, as points of enjoyment. As Glyn Daly states (T)he central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through simultaneously producing the "threat” to that closure’ (1999a, p.220). The fantasmatic construction of the symptom is of vital political importance. A political approach that seeks to reveal the concrete universal must not focus on the fantasmatic postulations that get generated about and around the symptom but, rather, upon the existence of the symptom from which the concrete universal stems.

As an example, the current debate around climate change recognises it as being the symptom (of something) and attempts to domesticate its effect so as to maintain the primary universal horizon of the social, that is, global capitalism and the production of wealth. Although it is often argued that change must occur to prevent environmental collapse, change is only considered within the parameters allowed by capitalist imaginary. This is an ideological construction; it includes the symptom, but gives it external cause, such as the failure of markets or governments to take pollution into account. It is contended that once these contingent factors are remedied, the capitalist imaginary will be restored to its fantasised state of fullness. What this brand of fantasmatic construction denies is the concrete universal; that the logic of capital (the ever-increasing demand for profit) is fundamentally unsustainable. A properly Lacanian psychoanalytic political approach would be to identify the concrete universal and expose it as the unbearable example within the universal horizon, that is, that the generation of wealth has natural limits. This is opposed to regular critical analysis which operates within the hegemonic fantasy, dealing only with the symptom as it is presented in fantasy or by perhaps trying to generate an alternative fantasmatic position which equally ignores the concrete universal e.g. various Green Party attempts to ‘Green’ capitalism.
An important ideological operation that can be seen in the domesticating of the symptom occurs through the production of ‘straw’ enemies, through the construction of external antagonisms. Again, this is another paradoxical operation of ideological fantasy; it operates by acknowledging and representing its impossibility in the form of an external obstacle (Daly, 1999a, p.224). Just as with the symptom, in which the subject experiences jouissance when ideologies fail, the subject experiences antagonism as a site of enjoyment. In order to avoid the anxiety that comes from the radical negativity of social life, antagonism, like the symptom, produces compensatory jouissance. Daly suggests that the production of an ‘Other’ that blocks the full constitution of identity and universality is the foremost fantasy because it gives cause for the fundamental lack in the subject (1999a, p.234). Hence it is always difficult to displace symptoms or reveal the contingency of antagonisms.Ideological fantasy enables the Real, which inheres within the symptom, to be encountered in a much more manageable fashion than happens through the strategy of repression, as reviewed above (Daly, 1999a, p.224). It does not simply repress the symptom, but rather domesticates it as either a temporal failure to be resolved, or the fault of an external impediment. Symptoms still exist, but society is no longer so reliant on the extermination these symptoms. Because of this, the social or the subject is rarely exposed to the Real in its naked, raw form, but rather as a domesticated encounter that maintains the belief that ‘society’ in all its consensual plentitude is possible. This effect can be seen at work in the universal horizon of a market-led capitalist system. The market is presented as an abstract universal; it is a natural, objective device that brings maximum wealth and well-being to all. When the market fails to achieve the impossible vision of its abstract universal, such failures are fantasied as being simple impediments to the market; failures which can be overcome through various compensatory measures, particularly in relation to the removal of antagonisms. The negation of the universal horizon by the symptom, which represents the exception of the universal, is therefore not considered a condition of the market, but rather something external to be fixed; a solution-in-coming.

This kind of analysis fits with a formalist understanding of identity, that A (the market) cannot be non-A (the constitutive failure of the market). Rather, any failure of the market is conceived to be caused by B, an external factor. However, as I have argued in relation to dialectical thought, the market can be both the market as an efficient wealth-producing device and its constitutive failure, such as the radical injustice of market mechanisms, as evident in global poverty. In the terms of Žižek’s parallax view, market failure is the symptom/negation of the abstract universal – the market-economy system – with the concrete universal being the determinate reflection of this negation in its constitutive role: that markets can only operate through their own failure. This constant failure, and thus the constant need for minor alterations in the name of universality, provides jouissance to the subjects involved, in the same manner as ideology achieves.

Super-ego demand
As well as fantasy and ideology, the other major factor in the domestication of the symptom is the super-ego. The super-ego is an imperative, an imperative to fill the gaps in the symbolic order (Evans, 2004, p.200-1). The super-ego is vitally related to castration, it is a constant reminder within the symbolic order of the ‘name-of-the-father’. The name-of-the-father is a Lacanian term that refers to the force of castration. It insists that the subject follow the symbolic law rather than live within the mythical, primal condition of Jouissance (Žižek, 1999, p.268-9). The more the subject follows the law, the guiltier they feel for having given up on the Jouissance available to them before castration, so the more they seek compensatory surplus enjoyment by following the law (Kay, 2003, p.170-1). The ultimate imperative of the super-ego is to enjoy; not only must the subject follow the symbolic law, but they must also enjoy it.

Thus the super-ego is not a subversive force within a discursive structure. Despite this inherent conformity, the super-ego is often the major discursive strategy used by those seeking to make political changes within an abstract universal. The most salient example of the use of the super-ego imperative as a discursive strategy for change is in charity appeals, such as World Vision. Indeed, the super-ego is actually a strong discursive strategy for the maintenance of the abstract universal. It appeals to the subject to maintain the symbolic order, in which they have invested, to fix the faults – the symptoms – within this order. Therefore the super-ego appeal can have a short-term progressive affect, appealing for the subject to recycle more, or to sponsor a Third World child, but ultimately these effects are only made in the name of maintaining the order which is producing these faults. More than this, the super-ego domesticates the disruptive effect of the symptom because these efforts to repair the symbolic fabric indefinitely postpone a confrontation with the Real.

The link between the super-ego and the symptom is best considered through the influence that ideological fantasy has in maintaining the consistency of the social. As with ideology and antagonism, the operation of the super-ego is such that the demand of the symptom is be enjoyed; the super-ego suggests the prospect of suture, but also keeps a distance from this (impossible) fullness. As an illustration, rather than critiquing the capitalist edifice as a totality that can end global poverty, we make a gesture towards such a goal. This act will never accomplish the fantasised end goal, but it does enough to delay the demand of the symptom. This is not, however a wholly productive strategy either for the efficient maintenance of the universal or its dislocation via the symptom/concrete universal. Super-ego jouissance cannot be avoided simply by attending to its demands; the more that the subject submits to its demands, the more that those insatiable demands are taken on. Herein lays the crucial link between the operation of ideological fantasy and the super-ego. Rather than taking on the demands of the super-ego so as to repair the social (say, to join the ‘Eradicate Poverty’ social movement so as to correct the capitalism’s inability to end poverty), the subject can turn to ideology and in particular, ideological fantasy, because ideological fantasy is able to externalise and appear to treat the cause of the symptom. The more the super-ego demands, the greater the need for ideological fantasy; the demands of the super-ego can be avoided by transferring them into the realm of ideology.

Although the super-ego demand is more ‘beneficial’ for a cause in the short-term (at least, here, attention is paid to symptoms such as poverty, ecological damage, etc), ultimately both the super-ego and ideology fail to invoke radical structural change. Rather, they produce what appears to be change, but is ultimately a rotation around a central axis, the Real. The super-ego prevents the subject from acting against the symptom and instead provides them with surplus-enjoyment, driven by the imperative to repair the symbolic fabric. What is required in order for thorough-going social change to occur is for the fantasmatic system which constructs the symptom as a temporal impediment to fullness, to be broken and the symptom revealed as the very condition of that system.

Fetishism and Disavowal

The major factor preventing this movement is the jouissance that is inherent to fantasy. Jouissance creates a bond between the subject and the universal imaginary such that any disconfirming evidence is impotent in its effects, even if the symptom is openly acknowledged. Accordingly, Žižek contends that the analyst or critic also has to go past the point of interpreting discursive formations because of the cynicism through which belief functions (Johnston, 2004; Žižek, 2002, p.241-2). Cynical belief operates through disavowal, where the presence of something is acknowledged yet paradoxically at the same time ignored. The subject may acknowledge the presence of the symptom which negates the abstract universal, but continue to strongly believe and invest in the abstract universal. This paradoxical form of belief is allowed to operate because of the presence of a fetishised object in which the subject invests. The object of the fetish mediates between the Real of the symptom and the abstract universal. Thus the concept of ‘cynical distance’ or disavowal is another modality through which ideologies operate and through which the Real obtains palpable form within the symptom.

Here, Žižek makes a distinction between repression and fetishism as two different modalities of defence against the effect of the Real. In repression, the subject refuses to acknowledge the symptom to the degree that they are unaware of its distorting influence. In contrast, in fetishism, the subject is aware of the symptom and experiences it as a site of enjoyment. Thus the subject can appear to be a pragmatic realist who fully accepts reality. This acceptance, however, is only founded on the existence of a fetish. When this fetish is removed, the subject has no defence against the lack in the Other (Johnston, 2004). Such has the potential to devastate the psychical state of the subject because it is through the fetish that they relate to reality.

Fetishtic belief is the last modality of defence through which discourses that acknowledge the presence of the symptom are able to pacify the dislocating effects of the symptom. Fetishism occurs where a discourse not only acknowledges the symptom, but also, in a purely interpretive manner, accepts this symptom as being wholly necessary. Thus the subject may see the faults in a universal such as global capitalism, can recognise its symptoms like poverty and rapid climate change, but still believe that society is possible because those symptoms are represented in fantasmatic ways, such as films, news reports, documentaries, etc. As a further example, a subject in the capitalist system may suggest that they know that markets must fail, but nonetheless they have a large libidinal investment in capitalism and thus act as if markets are not constituted by their failure. Daly (1999b,p.86) gives an interesting example here in relation to the welfare state. The modern welfare state apparatus acknowledges that poverty is not the fault of its victims; they are the product of capitalist development. Nonetheless the welfare state requires its clients to act as if their circumstances are their own responsibility. This belief also operates in Jeffery Sachs’ work on poverty (see Sachs, 2005), which will be more fully developed in chapter seven. Essentially, while Sachs constantly refers to the global economy, on his major topic, that of poverty, he suggests that poverty within Third World countries is purely the effect of their domestic policies and practices.Žižek believes that this is the unfortunate stalemate presented by global capital. As we see in reports from the United Nations and the Bretton Woods organisations, the state of the world – particularly climate change and environmentalism, and its effects – is largely well known and documented. This evidence, which should dislocate the imaginary coherence of capitalism because it stands in stark opposition to these elements, is instead displaced by commodity fetishism. Commodity fetishism, a Marxist concept redeveloped by Žižek, occurs where the capitalist subject places a large libidinal investment in an object of consumption. This object becomes the object of desire, of the objet a that allows rips in the symbolic order to be temporarily healed. This suturing that is provided through the fetishism of commodities, mediates the dislocatory effects of capitalism’s symptoms. Such is the grip of this economy of pleasure that there has been a closure in the political imaginary, one which has led Žižek to suggest that only a huge global event could possibility displace the organising effects of capital (Johnston, 2004).

Adrian Johnston contends that perhaps the biggest issue with fetishism is that those who fetishise do not feel they have a problem; they gather too much enjoyment from the symptom. Johnston cites the example of George W. Bush who refuses to take on any environmental policy that may endanger the American libidinal object ‘the American Way of Life’.

The efficiency in which the symptom is domesticated and included in the realm of the abstract universal means that any political method that seeks to promote radical change cannot do so from within the boundaries set by the universal horizon. In order to avoid this politically conservative outcome, political formations that seek to evoke a structural shift must try to perform the concrete universal, to stage the material Truth of the hegemonic discursive formation such that the hegemonic formation can not survive in its present state. There are two salient approaches relevant to this task. These focus on identifying two forms of discourse: discourses which identify the constituting role that symptoms are playing in the existence of universal horizon; and discourses of concrete universality. It is to these strategies that we now turn.
Discourses of the symptom

Discourses of the symptom, of which this thesis is an example, connect symptoms with the concrete universal. However, these discourses cannot be articulated from outside of the terms that are set by the hegemonic horizon. This issue stems from the incommensurability of the parallax view. While those who view the symptom awry can sense the presence of the parallax Real, and hence the concrete universal, a translation of terms between the two is impossible. This impossibility, however, does not limit the dialectical process. While the parallax view may appear to have commonalities with formalist logic because of the lack of symbolic translatability between levels of the parallax, the dialectical movement continues through the effect that the Real exerts upon the subject via their encounters with the symptom(s) of the abstract universal(s) by which they organise their lives. The dislocating effect that the Real has upon the subject enables them to shift their gaze from the abstract universal to the concrete universal.

The conditions of possibility for such a shift rely on the dislocating pressure that the Real exerts upon the abstract universal, rather than through special knowledge that the subject might claim to have, that is, rather than through any effect of the symbolic. As has been described previously, the pressure of the symptom is regularly subverted through the symbolic and the imaginary, either through the acknowledgement of symptoms in fantasy, or their repression. However, when these devices are not wholly successful, the symptom can become unruly and have the potential to incite the subject to shift their attention from the universal imaginary, because of the unruly effects of the Real as it inhabits the concrete universal. Discourses of the symptom can simulate the concrete universal by revealing the gap that is opened up within a given universal horizon by its symptom(s). Conversely, the very act of symbolising the symptom domesticates and particularises its potential effects; without the force of the Real the symptom is not a dislocatory force in itself and neither are discourses of the symptom. Instead, the biggest role that this kind of discourse has is to open up a space within the abstract universal, to force an internal dislocation. Thus Žižek suggests that; ‘(T)oday … it is more important than ever to HOLD THIS UTOPIAN PLACE OF THE GLOBAL ALTERNATIVE OPEN, even if it remains empty, living on borrowed time, awaiting the content to fill it in’ (Žižek, 2000b, p.325. Original emphasis).

Examples of discourses of the symptom include Green Radicalism and Marxist political economy. The example of Marxism is instructive here. Marxism, at a time when the ‘working-class’ of capital still existed as a strong force in developed/capitalist societies, could have been considered to belong to the category of discourse that I will soon develop below, that is, discourses of concrete universality. Contemporary Marxist thought, however, tends not to identify strongly with today’s working class in the Third World or in ‘developing countries’. Marxist theory still operates within the terms dominated by the western experience of capitalism. It may usefully identify the role that the symptom plays in constituting the universal (say, Third World poverty and western capitalist life-styles), but it still lies outside of the terms of the concrete universal; it does not inhabit this space.
It is also of limited use to simply present an alternative imaginary that is external to the current universal. This kind of discursive strategy fits into the formalist mode of thought. The excluded element – in Laclau’s and Torfing’s terminology, the ‘anti-A’ to the dominant A, or the formalist external ‘B’ discourse – is most likely to simply entrench differences regarding the identity of opposing universals rather than pose a serious challenge to the existing order. This is because discourses which are simply external to the abstract universal are not bearers of the Real, of the underlying absence that can dislocate the abstract universal. Rather they war they wage with one another happens fully within the symbolic order. Whilst, as Laclau contends, this ‘war of position’ over the content of an empty signifier – around which an abstract universal is structured – can bring change within this form of universality, empty signifiers do not interact with the underlying foundations of the order, that is, with the concrete universal. We see such an operation in the global conflict between Islam and the West. Rather than seriously threaten the hegemonic power of the Western world, Islamic militants are posited as external antagonisms which can be removed through conflict and force. Having detailed the manner in which such ‘unbearable examples’, in the form of symptoms, are so efficiently re-constructed and domesticated, one might doubt whether such a task can be achieved. As I have noted, while symptoms like poverty and global climate change are sometimes disavowed or repressed completely, they are generally acknowledged. Yet in the process of being acknowledged, symptoms are domesticated by the devices of fantasy and ideology. An alternative approach relies on shifting position within the parallax; from a focus upon the abstract to a focus upon the concrete universal. These discourses are external to the abstract universal in that they cannot be understood within its terms. As such, discourses of the concrete universal are Real from within the perspective of the abstract universal. It is to the analysis of these discourses that we shall now turn.

Discourses of the concrete universal
When observed through the lens of the ontological parallax, the concrete universal exists as the flip side of the abstract universal. That is, the content of the discourse(s) within the concrete universal cannot be perceived from within the abstract universal. Instead, it can only be seen from its effects upon what Žižek calls the parallax Real (Žižek, 2006a), that is, in what gets staged between two incommensurable perspectives. This effect comes through within the abstract universal’s symptom, which remains unsymbolisable until it is domesticated through fantasy (as I have laid out in the preceding sections). Therefore, so long as the effects that come from within the concrete universal remain in an unsymbolised state they have the potential to disrupt the abstract universal. This effect does not come through a symbolic/imaginary translation or interaction, but rather through the pressure that the concrete universal places on the abstract universal. .

An example may help here. If we were to suggest that the abstract universal of capitalism is the production of wealth, the concrete universal is the exploited foundation of this wealth, the Third World poor. This element of capitalism, that the conditions of possibility for the abstract universal lie in the concrete universal, is experienced by the subject as an unwanted symptom. The symptom here is the construction of poverty within the wealthy capitalist world. The reconstruction of the symptom in capitalist terms, through fantasy, has it coming out indissociable from the need for charity, of a humanitarian situation devoid of political consequences, which domesticates the unruly effects of the Real. Indeed, the very act of symbolising the symptom within capitalist discourse tames the effect of the symptom.

Using this example, discourses that are ‘of the concrete universal’ are discourses that would be occurring within the Third World about the poverty of the Third World, discourses which may not be intelligible within the terms of western perceptions of global capitalism. Their existence might be acknowledged, but could not fully taken on board without that western universal imaginary collapsing. Such an act would dislocate the abstract universal because of the unbearable contradiction between the two universals, between the western and the Third World views. Only through a radical structural shift in positions can two discourses within a parallax, and the incommensurability of the gap between them, be perceived.

The key to this form of discursive strategy is not to present the concrete universal as simply being external to the abstract universal, such that Third World discourses, for example, (usefully) provide an alternative, indigenous, non-western source of understanding about global poverty. Instead, the goal is to present the concrete universal as an internal element to the moment of universality (of global capitalism). If a discourse of concrete universality is positioned outside of the abstract universal from which global poverty is being interpreted, it subverts the dislocating (Real) element that is inherent to it, undermining the dislocating force (the parallax gap) that would otherwise emerge when that concrete universal is positioned as the incommensurable other to the abstract universal. Again, political motivation comes from the force exerted by that incommensurability, not from the ostensible coherence or logic of discourses that form in and around concrete universal. When positioned as an external other to the abstract universal, the symptom gets reconstructed in the image of that universal, as an external antagonism against which the abstract universal is thrown in conflict.

In order to avoid this outcome, the excluded element must present itself as the internal, constitutive exception of the abstract universal. The recent pro-immigrant protests in America are instructive of such an appeal to concrete universality. 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, being accused of criminal activity, of taking jobs away from real Americans, etc. Alternatively, 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 an elemental condition rather than an impediment to the system. Hence the appeal ‘We are America’.

The key here is not to simply put pressure on the abstract universal (in this case, Americanness) to include the marginalised group within its terms, using a particularised approach common to identity-based politics. This might result, in such a case, in the lodging of human rights claims with the law courts, seeking special application of legal protections to the otherwise illegally-positioned immigrants. Neither would it proceed through the proposing of an alternative universal that could surpass the failure of the former universal to represent the marginalised interests, perhaps leading to a new universal condition such as ‘North Americanness’ . These approaches will result in the domestication of the marginalised’s claims, and to open conflict, respectively. Instead, the discourse, like that of the American immigrant protestors, has to occupy the position of the concrete universal, sustaining its position as the constitutive exception.The method for identifying discourses in and around the symptom that has been outlined in this chapter will now be applied to two symptomatic discourses of global capital: poverty and Green ideology. The initial aim of this analysis is to examine the manner in which these discourses are constructed so as to manage the symptoms of global capitalism with which each is respectively concerned. These discursive structures will be investigated in terms of the various possible responses outlined above for managing symptoms. Special attention will be given to those forms of the discourses that have the potential to move outside of realm of ideological fantasy and into the status of concrete universality, and which thus have the potential to produce a radical structural shift in and around global capitalism. This task bears upon the viability of psychoanalysis for engaging with politics and, more particularly, the viability of ‘a practice of concrete universality’.