Thesis update

Background

My project seeks to develop a new understanding of political economy and capitalism via a fusion of Marxist political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Globally, the combination of Marxism and psychoanalysis is a project with a relatively long history. Leftist theorists have attempted this project in the belief that such a fusion would retain the emancipatory potential of Marxism whilst providing a more satisfactory explanatory framework for the operation of the psyche. The latest and most popular instantiation of this tradition is Slavoj Zizek.

Zizek and Marx

Zizek’s work is firmly embedded in Lacanian theory, but as his theory has become progressively political and increasingly anti-capitalist, Zizek has turned to Marxism. Marx had always been an influence in Zizek’s work, but had played a secondary role in comparison to Lacan and Hegel, whom Zizek utilised to organise his central emphasis on ideology and enjoyment/jouissance.

Even though Zizek has become increasingly influenced by Marxist, Zizek has not taken on Marx’s work as a totality, although he takes on the tradition of the Marxist totality. Zizek’s investment into Marxist categories is mixed. He claims a fundamental homology between Lacan and Marx in some areas, such as the symptom and the link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment. Other concepts, like ideology, commodity fetishism and class are retained as important elements of the Marxist edifice, but are given a radical Lacanian twist. Finally, the positivising aspects of Marxist theory, such as species-being and false consciousness, are discarded.

Critiques of Zizek

Through his interpretation of the Marxist tradition, Zizek attempts to provide a new critique of capitalism and a renewed global anti-capitalist political project. This move has been the source of both academic and political controversy. Some theorists contend that Zizek’s fusion of Lacan and Marx is illegitimate because of Zizek’s continued adherence to Lacan. Others argue that the incommensurability between Lacan and Marx has led to Zizek not providing a systematic account of capitalism, a failure which produces several symptomatic hesitations in his account of capitalism.

Many theorists suggest that Zizek’s work is good theory, but not good politics. Conversely, many of these critics accept the fundamental premises of Zizek’s work, that is, his commitment to a negative ontological position, yet they dismiss the political consequences of this commitment without suggesting alternatives that adhere to a negative ontology. Instead, they produce what one might describe as ideal politics and poor theory.

Moving forward

Instead, I believe that Zizek’s theoretical positioning provides an excellent, if esoteric account of capitalism, but one that is not operationalised to its full potential because of a lack of applied analysis. Additionally, however, Zizek’s work has been unable to move past analysis and critique, a point which he fully acknowledges.

My thesis seeks to address this issue by starting from and advancing Zizek’s problematic (how to act radically against capitalism without the positivising aspects of Marxism) by extending Zizek’s existing understanding of capitalism and attempting to go beyond this critique by advancing Zizek’s own theoretical categories, such as the concrete universal. Additionally I seek to reconsider the notion of universality within political economy, particularly in regards to surplus-value and its relationship with surplus-enjoyment, a relationship which is always based on an exclusion (the concrete universal/class).

Zizek and Marxism; Class

Thesis position summary; class

Žižek’s combination of Lacan and Hegel provides a particularly productive approach for understanding social life. Žižek’s work operates via an understanding of ideology, universality and the necessary exclusion caused by the effect of the Real. Increasingly, Žižek has sought to extend his work to a critique of capitalism. In doing so he has begun to work in the Marxist ‘tradition’, integrating several key concepts, must notably class. Conversely, Žižek’s core theoretical insights remain Lacanian, which is problematic for his usage of Marxism. If there is no class relationship, that is, if the positively existing elements of Marx’s work, most notably the revolutionary subject and communism, are no longer viable, what action can be taken against capitalism in the name of Marxism?

Paper summary

As Žižek’s work has become more explicitly political, and in particular anti-capitalist, the concept of class has come to the forefront of his conceptual oeuvre. Žižek’s use of class has signalled an increasing move into the Marxist tradition. His utilisation of class, however, differs from the classical Marxist definition, having taken a Lacanian twist. Žižek resists any positivisation of class, instead considering it to be a modality of the Lacanian Real, that is, a hitch that all symbolisations struggle to integrate. This hitch is then excluded from the discursive horizon, thus becoming a positive factor for other discourses.

However, Žižek’s use of class has been controversial. The field is split between three positions; those who believe that Žižek does not adequately define his concept of class, those who contend that Žižek’s Lacanian version of class is incommensurable with the Marxist tradition from which it stems and critics who argue that Žižek’s conception of class renders it a politically redundant concept. In response, I seek to intervene in this gap – whilst acknowledging the relative salience of the critical positions - by suggesting that class operates in four intertwined iterations. The first is the failure of class relation; class as a modality of the Real. The second is the repression of the necessary exclusion which occurs in actually existing class relationships. This repression is class as the concrete universal. Because there is no possible translation between the concrete universal and the associated abstract universal imaginary (the signifiers and images which cohere our common constructions of shared social life) the affect of the concrete universal is also the Real (in terms of the parallax gap within the universal totality). Finally we have class as it appears within the abstract universal. In this sense the meaning of ‘class’ is determined by a hegemonic battle. Consequently, part of the difficulty of utilising class is the discursive positions into which it fits. Conversely, identifying the most salient of these positions is a vital task for any instantiation of Marxism which hopes to make a radical intervention in the capitalist system.

Genealogy of class within Žižek’s work

The importance of class has developed slowly within Žižek’s work, yet his use of the concept has stayed remarkably consistent. Žižek’s initial English language publication, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), focused mainly on the fusion of Hegel and Lacan into a theory of ideology. It is notable, however, that class is introduced in this text, and in a very similar manner to that which will follow in later works. Žižek stated;

‘class struggle is not the last signifier giving meaning to all signification…. but – quite on the contrary – a certain limit, a pure negativity, a traumatic limit which prevents the final totalisation of the social-ideological field. The ‘class struggle’ is present only in its effects, in the fact that every attempt to totalise the social field, to assign to social phenomena a definite place in the social structure, is doomed to fail’ (Zizek, 1989:164).

Although this definition previews the usage of class in later works, it is only introduced as a minor concept, a momentary point amongst a discussion of the structurating effects of the Real. In his next major text, For They Know Not What They Do (1991), Žižek advances his conception of class, although within the same parameters, by explicitly labelling it as a modality of the Real. Class is a modality of the Real because it operates as a hitch in the social-ideological field which all symbolisations attempt to suture; there is no answer to class struggle, in the same manner in which for Lacanian there is no sexual relationship.

Žižek considers class to be of the same category. Class does not exist as a positive object. As Žižek says of Marx’s work on class ‘class struggle functions in a strict sense as the ‘object’ of Capital, that which cannot become the ‘positive object of research’(2006: 82, emphasis in original). As with all modalities of the Real, class exists as both a hitch and an excess. Class is not only the failure of each symbolisation but this failure gives rise to ever more attempts to ‘conceal and patch up the rift of class struggle’ (Zizek, 1991: 100).

Thus the failure of the class relationship produces ongoing attempts to suture this wound in the symbolic fabric. The main effect is to exclude the notion of class from capitalist society, an exclusion which forms the capitalist universal imaginary. Žižek argues that it is this exclusion of class which constitutes the global capitalist horizon. In relation to the battle for universality and hegemony in global capitalism via the exclusion of class, Žižek contends;

‘This contamination of the universal by the particular is ‘stronger’ then the struggle for hegemony ( i.e. for which particular content will hegemonise the universality I question): it structures in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for hegemony… the question is, also and above all, which secret privileging and inclusions/exclusions had to occur for this empty place as such to emerge in the first place’ (Zizek, 2000d: 320, emphasis in original).

Thus, the fundamental Žižekian point in regard to class is that it is not a positively existing entity. Rather class exists as a modality of the Real. Just as there is no sexual relationship, there is also no class relationship (Zizek, 2006: 82). However, what Žižek fails to do is specify a minimum (formal) definition of class. Even if class is cited as a force of negativity, an exclusion from the dominant order, the concept, in order to be able to identified as having this effect must have an existence in itself. At no point does Žižek specify what class is, beyond its effects. Thus the task for readers of Žižek who wish to take the class seriously to deconstruct Žižek’s work. This deconstruction aims to reveal the reasoning behind Žižek’s instantiation of class. Specifically we must consider why class (according to Žižek) has its stated effect as an exclusion from the capitalist order which constitutes that order. Such an examination requires an investigation into Žižek use of Lacanian theory, as well as the Marxist tradition from which class originates.

Relevant critiques of Žižek’s use of class

Žižek’s inability to properly define the place of class has led to confusion amongst followers and critics alike. The following are some of the most prominent critiques of Žižek usage of class;

Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey, suggest that while Žižek attempts to revive class struggle, he does so in accordance with a Lacanian-Hegelian agenda which bares little relation to either a traditional, or an ‘empirical’ conception of class (Robinson & Tormey, 2005: 95). For Robinson and Tormey, Žižek substitution of traditional Marxist class struggle for the Lacanian Real is theoretically regressive, bound to remain within an atmosphere of antagonism and violence without progressive political hope (ibid: 96).

Mark Devenney (2007:54) is extremely critical of Žižek’s conception of class. Suggesting that Žižek’s argument is ‘extraordinary’, Devenney contends that Žižek makes three key propositions in regards to class, for which he provides no evidence;

1. Positive elements such as race obscure class antagonism;
2. Class is a purely formal gap proved by it’s lack of formal expression;
3. Class over determines and structures the whole field in advance.

Devenney contends that the true role of class in Žižek’s work is that it ‘allows Žižek to wear Marxist labels’.

In reply, Žižek is equally critical of Devenney, in particular his ‘faked ignorance’ at the possible structuring role of an element which is symbolically absent (Zizek, 2007: 212). For Žižek and other writers of a Lacanian orientation, the effect of symbolic absence (in the form of the Real) does not equate to an absence of symbolic effect. Indeed, one should emphasise that the notion of societal impossibility is always double; not only is it impossible for society to reach a level of fullness, but the ontologically necessary barrier preventing society from reaching fullness is also impossible to symbolise (Zizek, 2000a: 100). This double impossibility produces the relationship between the symptom – which reveals the effects of impossibility – and ideology, which attempts to suture and displace the effects of the symptom.

Conversely, Devenney’s point has some relevance. If Žižek is suggesting that class over-determines the symbolic in its absence, what evidence does he provide for this assertion? This is a point to which we shall return, although it is worth noting here that the structuring role of class should not be taken as an a priori, rather it is a political exclusion, one which can be discovered only via concerted and applied political analysis, through a Lacanian lens and Žižek’s own notion of short-circuit analysis.

Sean Homer (2001: 7) argues that Žižek’s ‘thoroughgoing Lacanism appears to rule out the possibility of any orthodox ‘understanding’ of Marxism, or, indeed, the formulation of a clearly identifiable political project’. Although Homer suggests that Žižek’s rehabilitation of class is ‘to be welcomed’ (p.14), Žižek’s lack of positive definition of class has meant that the successful integration of class struggle into his project has been prevented by his adherence to Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Likewise, Ernesto Laclau states that Žižek’s political work suffers from ‘combined and uneven development’;

‘While his Lacanian tools, together with his insight, have allowed him to make considerable advances in his understanding of ideological processes in contemporary societies, his strictly political thought has not advanced at the same pace and remains fixed in very traditional categories’ (Laclau, 2000b:206).

Matthew Sharpe claims that Žižek fails to properly define class and in doing so utilises various definitions. He states that Žižek utilises two separate positions on class; class as ‘empirically locatable phenomena’ and ‘class struggle as a priori’ (Sharpe, 2004: 203-204). Although Sharpe’s work insightfully reveals hesitations in Žižek’s work around capitalism[i] (ibid: 196-198), in relation to class struggle, Sharpe produces something of a misreading of Žižek’s work.

Sharpe claims that Žižek’s notion of class and is split between an empirical concept and theoretical proposition. Sharpe argues that Žižek uses class both in terms of ‘empirically located phenomena’ and as an ‘a priori’’ concept. As well as arguing that class is the one element amongst many in terms of global struggle, Žižek makes numerous references to actually existing sites of class struggle. Sharpe suggests that this usage of class opens up Žižek for critique, particularly in light of the post-Marxism emphasis on discursive contingency, which has ‘robbed’ the working class of its privileged ontological status.

Sharpe contrasts Žižek’s efforts to provide examples of actually existing class struggle with his conception of class struggle as an a priori concept. Here Žižek is using class struggle as the Real, a traumatic hitch that cannot be symbolised, yet constitutes the horizon of understanding (ibid: 205). Just as, according to Laclau and Mouffe, ‘Society doesn’t exist’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985), neither do class relationships. There is some validity in this critique; Žižek does discuss class in both objective and formal terms, the designation of class struggle as the central antagonism of our times being the work of ‘concrete social analysis’ (Zizek, 1994: 25).

Conversely, Sharpe’s reading of these positions as an inconsistency in Žižek’s work is incorrect. Rather, both these positions stem from class as the Real. For Žižek, class is first and foremost an a priori concept[ii]. However, although class as the Real reveals that class relationships do not exist, the failure of class does not prevent the continued production of surplus-value. The necessary effect of economic reproduction based on surplus is class struggle[iii].

As such, there are several modalities of class antagonism within Žižek’s work. This does not change the fact that these operations come in response to class as a fundamental hitch in the process of economic reproduction. Nonetheless, Žižek’s refusal to define class beyond its structuring effects does pose a problem for his theory of capitalism.

My response to the problems inherent in Žižek’s usage of class

In response to this gap, I propose that class can be operationised in a manner which remains within the Marxist tradition, whilst retaining commensurability with Lacanian psychoanalysis. This operationisation relies on the usage of Žižek’s concept of concrete universality in order to refuse the deadlock of avoiding a direct positivising definition, yet requiring a minimal conception in order to work with the concept. This reflects the difficulty in positivising elements of the Real. Conversely, as Žižek (Zizek, 2000b: 214-215) himself states, when the Real is conceived as an internal - as opposed to external - limit to symbolisation, the failure of symbolisation can be represented through it’s effects. In turn, symbolisation can occur around these effects; hence the symbolic concept of the Real.

In order to work within this deadlock, the definition of class requires multiple classifications through several iterations before coming to rest with the concrete universal. The first step is to identify the very status of class which would allow for the lack of a class relationship. This step is the most difficult as it relies on a degree of positivisation which is largely disavowed in Žižek’s work.

The status of class relates to the fundamental economic issue of production and distribution of surplus-value. All modern (class) societies produce an economic surplus in order to reproduce themselves. Surplus-value is at the core of any economic system and is especially salient within capitalism in the form of profit. Profit and its oppositional determinate, class, are the fundamental base structure of capitalism. Even if one considers that capitalism itself is ‘non-all’, a contingent entity which is always in flux, revolutionising its own conditions (Zizek, 2006: 82), at the same time capitalism is always something, that something being surplus-value[iv] (Miklitsch, 1998: 497)

Class defines one’s position relative to surplus. This is not to suggest that class is a fixed concept, following, as an example, the Marxist class groups of Bourgeois and Proletariat. Rather I am suggesting that the concept of class, as a minimal definition, relates to the (economic) production of surplus-value that is necessary for reproducing modern society. The core question of class is, who is it that owns the means of production for surplus? Who is able to appropriate this surplus? (Glynos, 2001:80).

Thus, class is not purely a capitalist concept; it pertains to all surplus producing societies. A society in which no surplus is produced would not be a class society. This is not to suggest that such a society would be without hierarchy. This hierarchy, however, would be of a different nature from class societies.

In class societies in which surplus is required from societal reproduction, there exists no fair and guaranteed manner of distributing this surplus; any attempt at constructing a perfect class relationship will always fail. It was this symptom that Marxism and its various instantiations in communism and socialism, sought to remove. Removing class struggle is an ontological impossibility. Rather, economic systems have to establish themselves in relation to class as a form of the Real.

Žižek makes this point in The Sublime Object of Ideology (Zizek, 1989: 3). Lacanian ethics is not about removing the gap between the Real and symbolic, rather it is about establishing one’s relationship with that gap, integrating it into symbolisation. To integrate class into society is to acknowledge it as a fundamental hitch which cannot be removed. Vitally, however, acknowledging the Real should not result in a pragmatic resignation which confines politics to the already existing (Devenney, 2007: 46).[v]

Importantly, Žižek distinguishes between Lacanian and Marxist ethics. Marxist thought assumed the existence of a fundamental antagonism (class) which mediated all other antagonisms. Historical developmental would bring about the end of this antagonism, and thus all other antagonism. For example, communism would finish class struggle and thus all patriarchy.

Whilst Žižek, through the initial work of Ernesto Laclau, rejected the logic of the one mediating antagonism, his Lacanian theory has allowed his thought to go past that of post-Marxism. Conversely, as we shall see, this movement brings Žižek, through his notion of the concrete universal, back to the original Marxist position. This position, however, has been subject to the dialectical process; a classic example of Lacanian-Hegelian determinate reflection where the initial obstacle becomes the very positive condition of the discourse.

Here Žižek states he wants to go beyond Laclau and post-Marxism, characterised by Laclau’s discourse theory, in stating that the plurality of discourses – post-modern particularism – is a response to some fundamental real exclusion. For Žižek this exclusion is the Real. As I will expand on later, class is the Real, both in the sense that there is no class relationship and as the gap opened up for the instantiation of class as the concrete universal. It is to class as the concrete universal to which we now turn.

The core concept of Žižek’s notion of class is that there is no class relationship; no externally guaranteed manner in which surplus can be distributed. At the same time however, a (failed) class relationship always exists. That is, surplus-value is necessarily produced for the material reproduction of society. In our capitalism economic system that surplus (profit) is appropriated amongst the owners of capital[vi]. Under capitalist ideology this appropriation is considered fair reward for the risk taken by the owner in their investment of capital. Contrastingly, Marxist ideology equates profit with the exploitation of the workers who produced the surplus. What both these ideological positions are responding to is class as the Real; that there is no class relationship.

Both these ideological positions, capitalist and socialist, attempt to rid themselves of the symptoms of the exclusion of class as the Real, although via differing methods. Socialism both repressed and externalised the symptom. Surplus production was considered the territory of the worker. The cause of the failure to bring about the perfect economic system/class relationship was externalised to ‘enemies of the state’ through various infamous exterminations.

In contrast, capitalist, the more successful ideology, has acknowledged (in a more palpable fashion) the presence of the symptom. Within capitalist society there are various devices for this acknowledgement, the democratic process, unions, and charitable organisations. Additionally externalisation occurs, notably that the economically unsuccessful are themselves at fault for their status.

Additionally, within capitalist society the notion of class itself is disavowed, displaced to a number of fetishes. Class, particularly within western societies, is considered to be an increasingly redundant notion. Instead other concepts have sought to explain social stratification, such as social class and ethnicity. Additionally, the affect of class as the Real has been transferred onto various cultural fetishes, such as culture itself (e.g. working class culture, sport, drinking etc) and most significantly commodity fetishism.

Thus the role of ideology, and its various mechanisms, is to repress the necessary exclusion which stems from the instantiation of any class relationship. If class relationships are impossible, yet necessary, any attempt at universality in terms of surplus-value must exclude in order to constitute itself. This exclusion - the universal exception - is the concrete universal. The concrete universal is the element which is part of the set, yet incommensurable with that set. It constitutes the totality of universality. The universal is split between an abstract universal imaginary – the signifiers and images by which we guide our sense of shared social life – and the concrete universal, the exclusion which allows for the operation of the abstract universal.

Within our capitalist economic system, shared social life – abstract universality – is constituted by the production, and in particular the consumption of surplus-value, primarily in the name of surplus-enjoyment. This system is constituted on the jouissance of commodity fetishism and an ideological supplement of liberal democracy. Indeed, as something of a side bar, capitalism itself is left out of the hegemonic self-descriptions of western societies. It is almost as if to identify with capitalism is too brash, capitalism itself being too strong (Zizek, 2007: 212). Instead, it is liberal-democracy that is the primary societal value-identification in western societies. Capitalism, and the production of profit, is taken to be a natural existing state of affairs.

Within this universal imaginary, class relationships do not exist. Rather, we are all constituted on the same side of surplus-value. Ideologically, a sense of formal equality exists; all have the potential to consume and enjoy the fruits of production. Here exceptions to the rule are contingent aberrations, soon to be included in the universal set. Witness the construction of 3rd world nations as ‘developing countries’.

With the notion of the concrete universal, however, a different logic appears. Instead of focusing on the ideology of the abstract universal, the concrete universal considers exceptions to be part of the totality of capitalism. Exclusions, such as the workers of the developing world, are an essential, internal element of the capitalist totality. They are an exception to the set – incommensurable with the consumption standards of western capitalism – yet constitutive of the set. That is, for the consumption standards of the western world to function, an excess supply of workers is required. This excess of workers keeps wage prices low and production costs down. For this excess of workers, however, extreme and absolute poverty, possibly resulting in death, is a likely result. Indeed, the planet simply does not have the carrying capacity to be able to support bringing the majority of the population out of poverty.

It is this massive contradiction within capitalism that is repressed as the concrete universal. Thus, the concrete universal holds the very material Truth of class in terms of the predominant class relationship that operates within capitalism. Additionally, class as the concrete universal operates as the second modality in which class functions as a modality of the Real. Not only is there no class relationship, which acts as the Real in any economic system, but the instantiation of class relationships produces a gap between the abstract and concrete universal. This gap, which appears as symptoms throughout the symbolic order, is a modality of the Real.

It appears that we have returned full circle to the originary Marxist position, that is, of a base superstructure which is repressed by the operation of ideology and commodity fetishism. This move is perhaps Žižek’s most radical break (Miklitsch, 1998: 484); away from the contingency of post-Marxism, Žižek’s re-emphasises essentialism - an essentialism of the Real - which avoids the positivising constructions of traditional Marxism, yet maintains its traditions.

Indeed there is a strong link between these perspectives, a link which retains much of its original emphasis. However, critically a dialectical reversal has occurred. This reversal centres on the negative ontology which founds Žižek’s work. Here, instead of class as a positively existing entity, class is the exclusion (negative) which allows for the constitution of the positive order. Thus, while class is not simply one type of struggle amongst the battle for hegemony, as Laclau claims (2000a:292), but rather the key element which overdetermines the chain, conversely, the overdetermination of the chain does not occur from a positivisation of class, but rather a fundamental negativity that is excluded from the system. The absence of class from the symbolic order, therefore, is not evidence that class struggle does not exist. Rather class peace is already an effect of class struggle – of the power of contemporary capitalist ideology (Zizek, 1994: 23-25).

Žižek signals this conception in his discussion of historicism and historicity in Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. History is not an epistemological movement from essentialism to post-modernism, but rather a series of responses to class struggle (Zizek, 2000a: 112). That class struggle is largely absent from western contemporary struggle does not mean that class struggle is irrelevant, as Laclau would have it (Laclau, 2000a:300). Rather, for Žižek, Laclau’s very move into post-Marxism, into the explicit privileging of the political and the democratic, is a response to capitalism and class(Zizek, 2000a: 98).

It is only by means of a short-circuit analysis, which reveals the exception in its status as the concrete universal, that the true positioning of class in relation to capitalism can be considered. That is, while class is not a positive element in itself within the abstract universal imaginary of capitalism – here it appears as a marginalised category – through a short-circuit analysis, which reveals the exclusion from the universal imaginary, the role of class is revealed to the analyst. Thus the short-circuit analysis allows the analyst to grasp a concept which is unable to be positivised within the existing order. It is this kind of analysis which is required to restore class as a truly subversive category in the Marxist tradition of anti-capitalism.

Future issues

- What are the implications of this theoretical investigation for political action?
- How does this conception of class relate to Marxism, both from Marx himself and followers of Marx?




References

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[i] Sharpe highlights Žižek’s repeated class to politicise the economy, his tendency towards journalistic-style critique, ad hoc analyses and directive to other writers. These are valuable areas of critique to which I plan to return. Sharpe’s work is especially insightful for me as it considers many of the issues that I am covering. Essentially it argues that Žižek does not produce a coherent theory of capitalism because of the above reasons. I would like my thesis to build on this statement and construct a Žižekian inspired critique of Political Economy.
[ii] The notion of a priori is difficult in this context. Class as an a priori does not mean that absolutely universal, predating language. Rather, in the society in which we live, constructed in language, class is an exclusion from language, by language that consitutes the foundations on which language operates. But this is not to suggest that class operates univerisally in all possible formations. Rather it is politically a priori.
[iii] Note that both Sharpe and Devenney contend that Žižek constantly calls for a renewed critique of political economy, yet does not achieve this task. Devenney takes to account Žižek labelling capital as the Real, where post-Marxism is not welcome. Conversely, Žižek attacks the very form of current critiques of political economy. These attacks at policising the economy stay within it’s very parameters, achieving the policisation of the adminstration of the economy, but not considering the exclusion which consitute the economy (Zizek, 2000a: 97). Indeed Žižek considers that postmodern politics (within which he includes Laclau) cannot repolicise the economy because ‘the very notion and form of the political in which it operates is grounded in the depoliticisation of the economy’ (ibid: 98, emphasis in original).
[iv] We should also note the link between the production of surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment as the fundamental link between Lacan and Marx (Zizek, 2000c: 23-4; 2006: 82).
[v] But I have not quite worked out what the ‘correct’ relationship to class as the Real should be
[vi] Although it should be noted, of course, that the surplus appropriated by owners is taxed for community use, as well as the income of workers.

Making his Marx; Zizek's theory of capitalism

Sublime Object (1989)

In this first work, Zizek establishes himself as a Lacanian analyst of contemporary ideology, in conjunction with a return to Hegel. Zizek’s treatment of Marx is mixed. He produces in-depth discussions around the concepts of commodity form/fetish, ideology and the symptom. These analyses are positive towards Marx only in regards to the symptom. Zizek contends that for Lacan, Marx invented the symptom, although Marx was not aware of the Lacanian connotations of his discovery.

Marx’s discovery of the symptom lies in his identification of a place with no place within a universal entity. Bourgeois ideology identifies this place as an external/contingent aberration to the normal functioning of capital, but, vitally, Marx contends that this symptomatic element contains the Truth of capital. As an example of this interpretative procedure, Zizek examines the relationship between freedom and labour. In capitalism, all men are free; there exists no formal inequality between citizens. However, as part of this freedom, workers are free to sell their labour on the market. This necessary act, without which there would be no formal/abstract freedom, removes the freedom of those selling their labour. This notion of a particular element that subverts its own universal foundation is later developed in the Lacanian notion of a symptom. Comparable examples are also found in private property (we are all free to own private property, but because others own private property, the majority are not able own property as a means of production and are forced to sell their labour). This latter point is expanded on in For they know not what they do.

According to Zizek, however, Marx’s mistake was to attempt to remove the symptom, yet maintain capitalist productivity in an attempt to produce a utopian socialism. This attempt at positivisation, which also affects the Marxist notions of commodity fetishism and ideology, is an incommensurable barrier between psychoanalysis and several elements of Marxist theory.

Conversely, Zizek notes the fundamental homology between the logics of surplus value (Marx/capital) and surplus enjoyment (Lacan/subjectivity), although he reminds the reader that this link is not one made by Marx, who was historically unaware of the ‘turn to language’ which has produced this homology.

Additionally, The Sublime Object of Ideology is also notable for Zizek’s construction of the Real. As he later notes in For They Know Not What They Do, in this early text Zizek takes a ‘transcendental’ approach to the Real, one that produces a defeatist/conservative political logic. In regards to capital, whilst Zizek conceives of an incommensurable structural deficit in capital (class struggle), his position (established in regards to democracy) is not that we should attempt to remove this antagonism ( a la Marxist utopian socialism), but rather “come to terms with it and establish one’s terms with it”

For they know not what they do (1991)

Like Sublime Object, Zizek introduces For they know not what they do by stating that the book is moulded by three centres “Hegelian dialectics, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and contemporary criticism of ideology” all circulating around a symptom of Zizek’s personal enjoyment of pop culture. Ultimately, like Zizek’s previous book, he aims to use Lacanian psychoanalysis for political/ideological analysis.

This book features a long discussion on the relationship between Master signifiers and the commodity form, centring around money as a ‘general equivalent’ of all commodities. Commodity form is a central concept in all of Zizek main texts, although it is not a concept that I fully understand.

Perhaps the major step (in Zizek’s use of Marx) in this text is his identification of class struggle as the Real; “ the hitch which gives rise to ever-new symbolisations by means of which one endeavours to integrate and domesticate it, but which simultaneously condemns these endeavours to failure”.

Zizek states that class struggle is nowhere a positive entity (which perhaps explains why he never attempts to define the term?), yet it holds together society. Not as an ultimate guarantee allowing us to grasp society as a rational totality, but rather as a point of reference towards which all symbolisations point.

The Ticklish Subject (1999)

This book marks a major change in Zizek’s work, from ideological critique of social life (often directed at pop culture), to applied political critique, with, for the first time, an avowed anti-capitalist position;

“While this book is philosophical in its basic tenor, it is first and foremost an engaged political intervention, addressing the burning question of how we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal democratic multi-culturalism”.

Despite the change in focus, there is no explicit focus on Marx. However, it is important to note that in the years between 1991 and 1999, Zizek produced the ‘Wo es war’ series, which states in it’s introductory blurb “The premise of the series is that the explosive combination of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist tradition detonates a dynamic freedom that enables us to question the very presuppositions of the circuit of capital”. Interestingly, none of the major texts in this series (Did somebody say totalitarianism?, The plague of fantasies) feature any notable Marxist analyses. Perhaps the status of this series is that of vanishing mediator, allowing the transition between Zizek’s earlier and later projects.

Conversely, Zizek also begins to indicate a homology between his Hegelian position of (concrete) universality and Marx’s concept of the proletariat. The proletariat stand for the universal humanity, not because they are the lowest class, but because they are a symptom of the whole. True Universalists, states Zizek, do not preach tolerance and global unity, but rather fight passionately for universal Truth. As such, Badiou states that the task is not to translate the struggle into the existing order of being, but rather undermine the very under of positive positions. Here Zizek qua Marx makes an important distinction between the proletariat and the working class, because of the former’s subjective position in relation to Truth and the order of being.

Zizek again contends that capital (although, notably not class struggle) is the Real;
"In socioeconomic terms, we are tempted to say that capital is the Real of our age (not the contemporising contingency). Zizek sights the 'solipsistic' speculation on futures, first developed in Marx's interpretation of the self-enhancing circulation of capital, as an example of an operation of the real, an operation which is based upon the material environment and bodies of other people, and upon which it feeds like a giant parasite (although, we should not that this parasite also feeds many of those bodies, and many particularly well; no form of economic reproduction has ever managed to provide a better surplus).

Zizek claims that this is the difference between Lacanian reality and the real. Reality is the social reality of the actual people/environment involved in the interactive production process, the real the abstract spectral logic of capital which determines what goes on in social reality. Note the different between class struggle as an unseen antagonism which operates as the Real and abstract financial capital as the Real.

Zizek also produces an (impossible) challenge, one that could perhaps be read as directed to himself;

"This is our situation today; after the breakdown of the Marxist notion that capitalism itself generates the force that will destroy it in the guise of the proletariat, none of the critics of capitalism, none of those who describe so convincingly the deadly vortex into which the so-called process of globalisation is drawing us, has any well-defined notion of how we can get rid of capitalism. In short, I am not preaching a simple return to the old notions of class struggle and socialist revolution: the question of how it is really possible to undermine the global capitalist system is not a rhetorical one- maybe it is not really possible, at least not in the foreseeable future"

" So, there are two attitudes left, either today's Left nostalgically engages in the ritualistic incarnation of old formulas, be it those of revolutionary communism or welfare state social democracy dismissing postmodernism as a guise for capitalism, or it accepts capitalism as the only game in town through the third way"

Zizek states that the biggest move of the 'end of ideology' era is the rapid depoliticisation of the sphere of the economy; the way the economic functions is explicitly taken to be the objective state of things. He contends that as long as the depoliticisation of the economy is accepted, all other talk of rights is empty. There needs to be a subordination of the process of production to social control - the radical repolicisation of the economy.

Thus, today's ‘postmodern/post-marxist’ politics cannot be universal because they silently exclude the domain of the economy. Zizek suggests that rather than focusing on what is changing in politics and society, we should see the point around which they are rotating - the economy, profit and class struggle.However, Zizek does not want to downplay these 'tremendous advances' in favour of some economic essentialism;


"In short, I (Zizek) am pleading for a 'return to the primacy of the economy' not to the detriment of the issues raised by post-modern forms of politicisation, but precisely in order to create the conditions for the more effective realisation of feminist, ecological and so on, demands"

The Parallax View (2006)

In this latest text, Zizek appears to move back to his roots via a reformulated notion of ideological critique. The Parallax View is the first major text in his new ‘short-circuit’ series, which aims to confront a text with its disavowed foundations “The reader should not have simply learned something new, the point is, rather, to make them aware of another – disturbing- side of something they knew all the time”. In doing so Zizek hopes to combine ideological critique with Hegelian/Lacanian psychoanalysis for political ends. However, notions of a ‘new universal’ and the explicitly anti-capitalism of The Ticklish Subject have disappeared.

Zizek’s main theoretical device in this text is the notion of a parallax – “the confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral ground is possible”. Zizek contends that the parallax is vital to a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism (in contrast to a Kantian antinomy, between which no dialectical transition is possible). The restoration of dialectical materialism, in turn, is vital to a restoration of Marxism. In this statement, Zizek returns to his ever-present relationship with the Marxist tradition, without getting too close to his subject.

The Parallax View does feature an in depth discussion of Marxism through the notion of parallax, but is one that is both enlightening and confounding. Zizek provides a productive discussion on the parallax of consumption and production, arguing that post-Marx Marxism made an error in separating the (illusory) domain of consumption/appearance and production/essence. Instead, Zizek views consumption and production as a parallax within capital; neither is the deeper truth of the other. On the other hand, Zizek utilisation of the parallax view leads him to a division between politics and the economy, which appears to be in contradistinction with the call for a repolicisation of the economy found in his earlier work;

"Is not the ultimate Marxian parallax, however, the one between economy and politics - between the 'critique of political economy' with its logic of commodities and the political struggle, with its logic of antagonism? Both logics are transcendental, not ontico-empirical; and they are both irreducible to each other (class struggle is inscribed into the very heart of economy, yet has to remain absent, nonthematised- recall how the manuscript of capital Vol.II abruptly ends with it; and class struggle is ultimately 'about' economic power relations) but this very mutual implication is twisted so that it prevents any direct contact (any direct translation of political struggle into a mere mirroring of economic interests is doomed to fail, as is any reduction of the sphere of economic production to a secondary reified sedimentation of an underlying founding political process)”.

Zizek states that practioners of 'pure politics' like Badiou, Ranciere, Balibar and Laclau aim to reduce the economy to an 'ontic' sphere, deprived of its ontological dignity. There is no place for a Marxian critique of political economy. But does one have to make a choice between them? Either we have a critique of the economy and the political as a theatre of appearances, or the political, with the economy simply the servicing of goods.

Certainly in contemporary society the latter is the case, but this does not fit with Zizek's previous comments that we must repoliticise the economy, resist the current depoliticisation of the economy. I am unsure whether Zizek is describing a current, ontic-empirical parallax caused by the Real of class struggle or a transcendental logic. If it is the former, are we to attempt to bring the two sides together? Or is it a matter of repolicising the economy in a different manner; Not a positivised construction of the economy, but rather the economy as class struggle? Or are they two positions (that of a parallax between the economy and politics, and the call for a repolicisation of the economy evident in The Ticklish Subject) a parallax within Zizek’s work? Or an antinomy?

Additionally, Zizek usefully suggests that the prime candidate for today’s universal singular is those in the slums of large 3rd world cities. This mass of people (by no means a minority) are not an excess, a redundant surplus, they are incorporated into the global economy (the main reason for the sudden rise in population is the entry of 3rd world agriculture producers into the global economy, being beaten down by the 1st world). These people are the lumpen proletariat; Zizek calls for a more detailed analysis of their role in the global economy. However, Zizek does note that while Marx's working class are defined in terms of economic exploitation, the defining feature of slum dwellers is socio-political; they are the living dead of capitalism; a refugees refugee.

In Zizek more than himself?

My interest is in the applications, and limits, of Slavoj Zizek’s work for anti-capitalist political theorist. Zizek’s central political value is lies in his notion of ideology and in ideological critique as a form of political intervention. Zizek’s concept of ideology is based on the split movement between the founding negative ontology of the social and the imaginary ‘want-to-be’ for universality qua full identity. Zizek uses ideology to theorise the economies of enjoyment that are incited by this paradoxical process. It is enjoyment via ideology that pushes the subject to identify with ‘abstract/imaginary’ universality rather than coming to grips with negativity. The latter identification causes the potential for radical change. Thus, via ideological critique, Zizek’s analysis of the social is highly productive for negative politics and potentially for inducing radical social change. On the other hand, there are two major problems with his theoretical edifice that I seek to examine;

Firstly, whilst Zizek persists in calling for a repoliticisation of the capitalist economy, through the sustained and concrete application of ideological critique, he himself does not fully accomplish this task. I seek to investigate whether this is a contingent oversight, or reveals a certain (necessary) failure in Zizek’s work. Secondly Zizek’s work, following a (post)modern rejection of normatively, allows for no inherent basis to an alternative order.

We must ask then;
- What is the value of Zizek for anti-capitalist political theory?
- Can these failures be avoided with the addition of another signifier/extension of Zizek’s work?
- Or, by applying Zizek’s theory to himself should we consider these failures his own concrete universal, the exception to his work which acts as its positive condition?
- If this is the case, should Zizek’s work be abandoned by the anti-capitalist cause, or short-circuit to go beyond its own boundaries?


To establish the value of Zizek’s work for anti-capitalist political theory, we must first examine his conception of ideology and ideological critique. As a philosopher of what exists (and, correspondingly, that what is non-existent – the Real) Zizek is exceptional. His work utilises Lacanian psychoanalysis, combined with Hegelian dialectics, to produce notions of ideology and universality which are highly productive for political analysis. The operation of ideology is what maintains the capitalist system, despite its apparent contradictions/exceptions (extreme poverty, environmental degradation etc…). Thus any form of critique which seeks to destabilise capitalism must consider the functioning of ideology within capital.

Ideology operates because of the negative ontology which modulates the operation of the symbolic order. The symbolic is negativity charged because symbolisation always fails; it is never completely able to represent the ‘thing’. The failure of symbolisation produces a lack in the subject; the failure of the symbolic produces the Real, that which the symbolic has been unable to signify. Yet the subject is constituted by an imaginary ‘want-to-be’ which attempts to revoke the affect of the Real. This desire means that the lack of the Real is experienced by the subject as a positive condition, pushing the subject to find that one additional signifier that will fully suture the social.

Desire qua identification operates through ideological fantasy; fantasy teaches the subject how to desire, supporting their desire. Ideological fantasy attempts to produce a universal identification by grouping signifiers together around a master signifier, otherwise known in Lacanian terms as objet petit a, the object of the subject’s desire. The illusion is that by obtaining the missing object/signifier the subject can be whole – universal. In order to produce this affect of wholeness, those signifiers which do not fit with the master signifier must be excluded; these exclusions are an affect of the Real.

The existence of non-identity within identity takes two predominant forms. The most commonly identified form of non-identity is the constitutive outside, which operates as an external antagonism. The constitutive outside establishes the identity of the inside. The standard ideological operation is to produce a false dichotomy of us/them. ‘They’ being responsible for the failure of the universalising imaginary. The displacement of lack through ideology dilutes the ontological anxiety caused by non-identity. This is not to suggest that a constitutive outside is an ideological illusion. All systems require an exterior to define the boundaries of the system. What is ideological is the use of the exterior to give cause to the dislocatory affect of the Real.

The affect of the Real within the symbolic is given form by symptoms, which are epiphenomena of the concrete universal. The operation of universality is split in a parallax between abstract universality and concrete universality. Abstract universality is the systematic performance which facilitates the subjects ‘want-to-be’ in terms of identification. As noted, the central mechanism of abstract universality is ideological fantasy. What ideological fantasy has to deal with is the ontological anxiety produced by the split in universality. The other side of the parallax within universality is the concrete universal. The concrete universal is the necessary exception to the abstract imaginary, the element which is strictly not of the genus, but yet is necessary for its continued functioning. Thus, for the abstract universal to function, it must repression the concrete universal. The effect is an ontological parallax; one cannot hold the split forms of universality together. The gap within universality is the Real; it is the materialist Truth of the symbolic system – the concrete universal is the concrete representation of existence.

A symptom is the evidence of the concrete universal within the universal imaginary. As such, the symptom produces much anxiety. It is this anxiety which ideological fantasy seeks to nullify. The operation of ideology is particularly complex, functioning according to the concrete circumstances of the situation. We can, however, seek to understand (as Zizek does) the formal operation of ideology, given the overall direction of its functioning; servicing the subjects want-to-be in the face of the lack in the Other. In the social, this lack is expressed as exclusions; the role of ideology is to nullify these exclusions in order to maintain the hegemonic horizon. The most common ideological operation is to reproduce exclusion in a more palpable form, either as a contingent and temporal blimp, or as the result of external elements. The latter operation is particularly powerful, based as it is on the postulated of a ‘constitutive outside’ that maintains the status of identity.

Two other mechanisms operate within capitalist identity, that of super-ego and cynical reason/fetishism. Super-ego demand operates in the apparent face of the failure of capital, acting a suturing device and a point of enjoyment for the subject. Super-ego demand can only produce a limited suturing, as we see with the operation of charities – after a while the subject says enough – before reverting back to an ideological position. The ultimate effect of super-ego is that it forestalls the anxiety of the symptom, providing a temporary suture by helping the subject see the structural necessity of exclusion.

In contrast, cynical reason has the structure of a fetish. Rather than Marx’s ‘They don’t know that they are doing it, but they are’, Zizek suggests that the structure of late capitalist subjectivity is such that “They know very well what they are doing, but they are still doing it”. Thus the subject may well know that capitalism is a flawed system, causing misery that they themselves find unacceptable, yet they still operate as if this is not the cause. Such reasoning is built on a fetish, generally a commodity fetish, which provides objects of affective investment for the subject, such that the dislocating power of the exception can be ignored. Additionally, there is a fetish of a false dichotomy; communism has failed, capitalism has proved successful, therefore the failures of capitalism can only be dealt with by capitalism itself. Such an argument relies on a formalist logic, rejected by Zizek’s ideological critique.

Zizek’s notion of ideological critique employs a dialectical materialist logic. The central premise of ideological critique, states Zizek, is not to reveal something new, but rather to unveil a disturbing underside to that which is already known. As an illustration, the presence of absolute and horrific poverty is well acknowledged in the western world. The various ideological mechanisms documented in this article are employed to pacified the anxiety which stems from this element of non-identity (poverty in a system designed for wealth production). The role of ideological critique is to break down the functioning of ideology, thus loosening the effectiveness of its stabilising mechanisms. In doing so that which is hidden by ideology (in form, not content) is revealed – that poverty is constitutive of capitalism.

As a result, Zizek’s work on ideological critique functions as a mode of political intervention. Zizek’s ideological critique seeks to identify those symptomatic elements within ideology that can be loosened from its grasp. These symptoms are evidence of the concrete universal – the necessary exclusion within an abstract universal imaginary – which offer the prospect of the radical overturning of the current order. Through ideological critique, Zizek seeks to produce an ontological anxiety which cannot be sutured via another signifier.

There appears, on the surface at least, little reason why such a political method cannot be applied to an analysis of capitalism. Certainly Zizek attends to this task in a typically eclectic fashion. What his work lacks is the applied analysis of capitalism, identifying those symptomatic elements which, in their incomplete relationship with ideology, may hold possibility for political transformation. Additionally, I may find it beneficial to use Marxist economic analysis to accomplish this task.

It is the addition of Marxism, however, which has proven controversial in Zizek’s work. Many critics, such as otherwise ally Ernesto Laclau have argued that Zizek’s work is made up of sophisticated Lacanian theory and unrefined Marxist-Leninism. Perhaps here we need to distinguish between Zizek’s use of the latter for economic analysis and political prescription[i]. It is Zizek’s politics, in terms of Zizek’s positing of positive alternative political compositions, which has proved more controversial.

Zizek rejects any political change within the existing capitalist formation. Instead, he argues, a whole new matrix of ideological understanding is required. The socio-political form of this conceptual matrix, however, is a manner on which Zizek is noticeable silent. This silence contains both the production of structural alternatives to the current hegemony – alternative systems for the production and reproduction of shared social life - or the normative values which could underlay that system. Indeed, one is not even certain if Zizek truly believes that an alternative system is possible in the sense that what is to come will not be recognised as a system at all by our current co-ordinates. Again, in this formulation, Zizek cannot get past purely negative politics, a form of politics which seeks to destruct the present within the possibility of a future.

If Zizek does produce normative/alternative statements, these appear to have a ‘journalistic quality’ or to be a matter of person opinion. In both cases there appears to be little link with has theoretical edifice. Certainly the theoretical depth which is evident in his work on universality and ideology is absent. My question is whether this discrepancy is purely contingent, or is it necessary, taking on the concrete universal of Zizek’s work. If the latter is the case, then must Zizek’s work be dismissed as a political alternative? (Or used for what it is; a brilliantly insightful form of ideological critique, but nothing more?). Alternatively, in a Zizekian twist, can this lack be seen as a positive condition for Zizek’s work? Still further, can we short-circuit Zizek, say through the use of a Marxist analysis of political economy in order to take Zizek beyond his own inherent confinement?

Following the identification of problems here, I need to undertake a literature review of the various critiques of Zizek. This will enable me to see what is out there and do it better, or at least differently. At this stage I am envisioning that my thesis is still a Zizekian thesis (that is, pro-Zizek). I do not want to reject Zizek, but rather to move beyond him. The question is how to do this; to go back to his original sources (as Wendy suggests) and find different interpretations, or is to use differing discourses to short-circuit his work. Perhaps a discussion on theoretical/research method would be valuable. Can a critique of Zizek be achieved in Zizekian manner?$

[i] Nonetheless, there do remain several issues with the fusion of Lacan and Marx

On Badiou

Alain Badiou is a theorist of change. His primary philosophical focus is the analysis of the possibility and existence of the new in any given situation. Novelty does not, however, appear from some previously unknown exteriority, but rather emerges from within the situated circumstances of the existing. What Badiou is most interested in is new ‘events’ that emerge with such destructive force that they alter the structuring co-ordinates of the present. Badiou’s notion of the event has much in common with the Lacanian Act. Indeed, his whole theoretical edifice is, for the most part, consistent with Lacanian psychoanalysis. As such, whilst Badiou focuses on the possibility of radical political change, like Lacanian psychoanalysis, his work is accussed of being politically conservative or impotent. This paper seeks to review this accusation through an analysis of Badiou’s position on change. It is found that in comparison to the most prominent contemporary advocate of the Lacanian Act- Slavoj Zizek- Badiou’s work places too much emphasis on the event and too little on the political ground work- what Zizek labels ideological critique- that goes into producing an event/Act.

Badiou makes a sharp distinction between repetition (the realm of knowledge, the existing ideological parameters of the social) and disruption in the form of events (Johnston, 2007, p.2). Badiou contends that nothing new can come from knowledge and as such it is not worth the interest of the philosopher, nor the politician, or at least the radical political analyst. Instead Badiou proposes a politics focused on the prospects of rupture or discontinuity within knowledge, as caused by an event.

Much of Badiou’s philosophy is based on developing the distinction between these two categories, although, as we shall later develop it is the link/gap between the two which holds more political interest. The social world is considered to be a state of constant flux, but this movement comes in different categories and degrees. As such Badiou proposes the general category of becoming the signify the movement of the social realm. Elements do not just exist, they enter into the realm of being and ‘become’. Becoming is divided into modification (becoming without any real change) and site, a place with the potential give rise to real change. Speaking in Zizekian terms, site can be considered to be the area where the symptom and concrete universal come to match up, either through the strength of the excluded concrete universal or the failure of ideological shock absorbers to deal with its symptomatic excess.

Site itself is sub-divided into deed/occurrence- a site which, while not strictly a modification (it is outside of the ideological realm) lacks the affective performative element that would produce a strong situational effect - and singularity, a site with possibility of producing intense and far-ranging structural change. In this division, a deed or occurrence may be a change which operates under the radar of the structuring ideology and as such may exist in structural contradiction to that ideology, without posing a threat. A non-profit community group could be an example here; their activities maybe in contradiction to capitalism, but their scale is such that little movement is detected. In contrast, a singularity is structurally located in a position that positing more of a threat to the central ideological fantasy. Some elements of climate change discourse are an example of a singularity.

Additionally Badiou divides singularity into 'weak singularity' as a dormant singularity which does not produce change. This (symptomatic) element does not cause radical transformation, but retains the possibility of doing so. Opposed to weak singularity is event, whose consequences are maximal; an event changes the co-ordinates of being (p.3-4). The difference between these elements is one of a minimal difference. The difference does not lie in content, but rather form; at any stage an element can move from a deed to an event, depending on its relationship with the hegemonic universal ideology. Again, climate change is the paradigmatic example. Initially, climate change was little more than an occurrence, a symptom at the margins of capitalist ideology. Recently though, it has produced far greater anxiety, suggesting that it had moved to becoming a site of singularity with the possibility of provoking an event. Such has been the effect of capital, however, that climate change has been integrated into the official ideology; it has become a mere modification.

What Badiou desires, both philosophically and politically, is for an element like climate change to become an evental site. Badiou defines an evental site as;

“an entirely abnormal multiple, that is, a multiple such that none of its elements are presented in the situation. The site, itself, is presented, but 'beneath' it nothing from which it is composed is presented. As such, the site is not part of the situation. I will also say of such a multiple that it is on the edge of the void..." (Badiou, 2005, p.175).

He adds;

“It becomes clearer why an evental site can be said to be one the edge of the void when we remember that from the perspective of the situation this multiple is made up exclusively of non-presented multiples. Just beneath this multiple, if we consider the multiples from which it is composed- there is nothing, because none of its are themselves counted as one. A site is therefore the minimal effect of structure which can be conceived; it is such that it belongs to the situation, whilst what belongs to it in turn does not. The border effect in which this multiple touches upon the void originates in its consistency (its one multiple) being composed solely from what, with respect to the situation, in-consists. Within the situation, this multiple is, but that of which it is the multiple is not" (p.175)

Thus, an event raises what had been previously unseen, unknowable within the hegemonic co-ordinates of the order, to a position of power (Johnston, 2007, p.20). This position of power is not an initially constructive force, rather it forces a re-scrabble of the ideological matrix; that which has been excluded holds no greater truth than what already existed. Rather, its presence unveils the gap between what Zizek labels the abstract universal imaginary (the existing ideology) and its necessary exclusion- the concrete universal. The eruption of this gap, the materialist Truth of these circumstances, causes us to reconsider the manner in which we previously held the axiomatic truths which found our society. Thus, although Truth causes a radical reconsideration of what is, the positive form of the excluded truth- the concrete universal- holds no more Truth in itself than the abstract universal. As Zizek states; "one should be clear here in rejecting the dangerous motto "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which leads us to discover "progressive" anti-imperialist potential in fundamentalist Islamist movements" (Zizek, 2007, p.3).Perhaps the key point is that the gap/void between is not just nothingness, there is a philosophical and political importance to what is on the edge of void and that which reveals the void; the concrete universal (p.21).

As can be seen, Badiou’s focus is on the possibility of change and the various forms of non-identity (established as a minimal difference in form) that operate within being. In doing so, however, Badiou stands accused of insufficiently focusing on the relationship between being/modification and site/event. Whilst similarly orientated theorists such as Zizek place much of their emphasis on ideological critique, Badiou remains focused on the event in itself. The focus on events (with its associated dismissal of knowledge) leads some to charge Badiou of depoliticising politics. Additionally, some, such as Levi Bryant (Bryant, 2007), suggest that Badiou does not pay enough attention to the structure of situations and the manner in which human ‘animals’ are attached to them. His focus is predominately events/truth-procedures as opposed to why human’s seldom recognise these elements/events. Essentially, Bryant is argues that Badiou has placed too little emphasis on knowledge/multiplicity and too much on the event, thus underplaying the attachment subjects have to the situations to which they belong.

Such an analysis is based on the Lacanian conception of the subject. The Lacanian subject, whilst structured around a lack, a fundamental negativity, is also characterised by an excess, a ‘want-to-be’. As Bryant states;“From the moment that the signifier appears it becomes possible to refer to the thing in the absence of that thing. Thus the signifier imbues the thing with absence, with its own death, with the possibility of its own non-being”(p.16). Thus, one has to consider as part of a signifier its own absence- the signifier differs not only from another signifier, but from itself.

Because the signifier (which represents the subject) cannot signify itself, it perpetually requires another signifier to signify it; we always desire another signifier which we believe to be the ‘final’ signifier . The logic of the signifier produces a lack of closure which acts as a positive condition for the subject. The lack in the symbolic produces an excessive over-determinism such that subject (according to Zizek, as opposed to Badiou[1]) has the capacity to formulate their own desire.

Desire, the ‘want-to-be’ which characterises the subject, prevents events from readily occurring. An event would reveal the constitutive lack in the Other which would prevent the discovery of the final signifier, thus as Bryant states;

"Consequently, there is a tendency within the subject to attribute substantiality and completeness to the Other- even when faced with vast bodies of evidence to the contrary, as an article of faith that the final signifier does exist…when faced with evidence to the contrary, the analysand does not revise or discard these beliefs, but instead holds all the more vigorously to his beliefs " (p18-19).

As a consequence of the desire for a final signifier, and the fantasy which supports desire, the subject/system has little interest in an exposure to Truth or an event. We must therefore ask under what conditions a subject/system may be open to an event and what kind of political intervention could produce these circumstances.

Traditional continental thought has tended to focus on the ideological structuration of the subject. Within Badiou’s work, however, the discussion of these mechanisms is generally unsatisfactory. As Bryant contends, for Badiou; “the world of language, ideology, power and custom is little more than simple opinion, standing in stark contrast to truth” (Bryant, 2007, p.5). Yet, despite this easy dismissal, the realm of opinion and axiomatic truth operates as the ideological adhesive of being. It is opinion, where the subject believes they are committed to truth (and the associated perfomative affect) that prevents the subject from entering into Badiou’s truth procedure and causing an event.

Badiou himself is not ignorant of this affect. Bryant (p.10-11) states that, for Badiou, situations are always doubly structured through presentation and representation. That is, elements both exist and structurally exist; they are not mutually exclusive in terms of their division into sets. We see this affect with the structuration of climate change discourse; climate change concern can range from the ‘eco-chic’ which features in everything from woman’s’ fashion magazines to eco-Marxism discourse.

Badiou also contends that every situation has a meta-structure/state of the situation that is responsible for ‘counting’ elements within a situation. Essentially the meta-structure creates the ideological conditions of universality. Badiou states;

“The void, which is the name of inconsistency in the situation (under the law of the count-as-one) cannot, in itself, be presented or fixed...it is necessary to prohibit that catastrophe of presentation which would be its encounter with its own void, the presentational occurrence of inconsistency as such, or the ruin of the One...In order for the void to be prohibited from presentation, it is necessary that structure be structured, that the ‘there is Oneness,’ be valid for the count-as-one. The consistence of presentation thus requires that all structure be doubled by a metastructure which secures the former against any fixation of the void” (Badiou, 2005, p.93-94).

Given the apparent structuring of the social, it appears that any political method that seeks change must aim at destabilising the mechanisms which all suturing the social. An intervention which rests its hope on an event occurring in itself appears to be politically optimistic, if not simply naive. In Zizek’s terms, what is required for an event/act to occur is a traversal of ideological fantasy, a process which requires an ideological critique.

In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek presents an ethics that aims at loosening the hold of the symbolic. Here he states;

“we must not obliterate the distance separating the Real from its symbolisation: it is this surplus of the Real over every symbolisation that functions as the object-cause of desire. To come to terms with this surplus (or more precisely, leftover) means to acknowledge a fundamental deadlock (‘antagonism’), a kernel resisting symbolic integration-dissolution” (Zizek, 1989, p.3)

Politically, we must resist desire to suture that which is on the edge of the void, to create yet another positivisation that would cover over and hide the fundamental antagonism within the social (Bryant, 2007,p.21). Badiou himself suggests something similar in his notion of subtractive politics. Badiou contrasts his subtractive politics with the 20th century passion for the real; a modernist desire to strip away illusionary narratives to find the hard kernel ‘x’ beyond narrative. This passion involves an attempt to short-circuit the relationship between the ideal and the real; what is real becomes the ideal. This modernist desire brought with it a politics of destruction (Johnston, 2007, p.15-16).

Badiou revokes the politics of destruction with his formulation of the politics of subtraction. Subtractive politics attempts to examine and utilise the fundamentally negative ontology of the social. This is a move from positive to negative politics. Badiou suggests that this subtractive path involves examining the real not as that which is behind reality, but rather as the minimal difference within reality itself (Johnston, 2007, p.16).

Zizek also evokes the pertinence of the Deleuzian term "minimal difference" –a miniscule (formal) difference that separates an element as a contingent (or rather, externally caused) crisis point within statist ideology, or that very same point as a symptom of the repressed Truth of the state (Zizek, 2007, p.5). This is the art of politics of 'minimal difference';" to be able to employ a parallax view which enables the political analyst to discover which elements have to potential to come loose from ideology, producing an ontological anxiety of truth, caused by the unmediated presence of Truth.

In order to employ such a parallax perspective as a tool of the politics of minimal difference, an ideological critique needs to be performed. Zizek states that the aim of such a critique is not to reveal something new to the reader, but rather something disturbing about what they already knew (Zizek, 2006). This kind of analysis is not readily available within Badiou’s work. Although Badiou utilises the notion of minimal difference in the idea that elements are always doubly inscribed, both presented and represented, the focus is much more on event then the stabilising role of ideology in holding movement to modifications as opposed to singularity and event.

The mistake, as Johnston notes, is that because of the grip of ideological fantasy, one can not readily see the possibility of an event without ideological critique; an event will not just appear, it will always be ‘doubly inscribed’ in ideology. As such, any political intervention that aims at producing an event must also engage in an ideological intervention through a through interpretation of the structure of the situation, including the economies of jouissance in operation. As such, Bryant suggests that;

"rather than looking to Zizek's various texts for a theory of practice or what we should do, we should instead read these texts themselves as a form of practice. That is, we should not ask whether Zizek's interpretations are true or false, but should instead ask what these interpretations do" (Bryant, 2007, p.22).


Zizek himself suggests that the primary task of emancipatory analysis is to reject the represented ideological dualism of axiomatic ‘truths’ and falsity and bring in the third term which maintains this division (Zizek, 2007, p.3);

“The hegemonic ideological field imposes on us a field of ideological visibility with its own principal contradiction (today that opposition is market-freedom-democracy vs. fundamentalist-terrorist-totalitarianism-Islamofascism etc), and the first thing to do is to reject (subtract) from this opposition to perceive it as a false opposition destined to obfuscate the true line of division...The basic operation of hegemonic ideology is to enforce a false point, to oppose a false choice" (p.3)

As Adrian Johnston contends;
“No critical theoretical analysis of ideology is immune from the threat of being appropriated by ideologically duplicitous rationalisations of quietism... not only is it possible to lie in the guise of truth- any truth can be twisted into a tool for engendering an acceptance of the status quo”.

Thus, while there is no fail-safe method for destabilising ideology in the name of change, to have change we must focus on existing stability. That is, given the negative ontological structure of the social, the prospect of change is always a possibility. Yet, through ideological fantasy, this prospect rarely eventuates. In order to thing change of the scale which Badiou seeks, a more focused critique of existing ideology is required. Optimally, this critique will take the form of a parallax view, opening up the space of minimal difference within the social and exposing the possibility of an event. Any political position, such as Badiou’s, which places its main emphasis on event as the expense of ideology is, in my opinion, short-sighted. Yet, this is not to dismiss Badiou’s work. Ontologically, his position is very Lacanian and his concepts of modification and site appear productive. Yet, because of the previously mentioned over-emphasis on change at the expense of stability, it appears that something is missing in his work that may be available in Zizek.






Badiou, A. (2005). Being and Event (O. Feltham, Trans.). London: Continuum.
Bryant, L. R. (2007). Symptomal Knots and Evental Ruptures: Zizek, Badiou, and Discerning the Indiscernible. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 1(1).
Johnston, A. (2007). The Quick and the Dead: Alain Badiou and the Split Speeds of Transformation. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 1(2).
Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.


[1] For Badiou the subject only emerges through an event

Wealth and Poverty

This week I have been investigating some capitalist 'solutions' to economic development and poverty. Within these 'revisionist' approaches to development, there are three predominant postulated responses to poverty;
- The non-opposed exterior (Those 'passively' in poverty);
- The antagonistic exterior ( Socialism);
- The antagonistic interior (World Bank's perspective of the IMF).

Capitalism is considered to be the only possible economic system. Formalist logic suggests that capitalism has been more successful at producing economic growth than any other alternative, therefore capitalism= wealth. Under this ideology, poverty exists because of a lack of capitalism.

Paradoxically, a parallax is produced between wealth (as identity, abstract universal) and poverty (non-identity, concrete universal). No relationship is conceived between the production of wealth and the production of poverty. Nonetheless, the gap between the two is reproduced as a possible object; that poverty can be eliminated by becoming wealth.

Capitalist development ideology suggests that for poverty to be eliminated capitalism must be globalised and the conditions of capitalisation reproduced in this non-opposed exterior. No possibility is given to an incommensurability between wealth and poverty. This is the true parallax (poverty as the disavowed foundation of wealth) and the aim of psychoanalytic ideological critique; not to reveal something new, but a disturbing underside to what is already known.

Nonetheless, texts which take poverty seriously cannot deny its continued existence, despite the rapid globalisation of capitalism. Cause must be found. It is located in two areas of anterior, either exterior or interior. Both forms of antagonism are credited with causing, either initially or contemporarily, the existence of poverty. We shall first deal with the former.

Exterior antagonism is what would be dialectically considered a constitutive outside; an exterior which affirms interior identity. Within the operation of formalist ideology exterior antagonisms work in much the same manner, giving cause to that which is excessive to identity. There are numerous modalities of exterior antagonisms. Three forms are predominant within capitalist development discourse; natural/historical, internal and external.

External exterior antagonisms are elements that are discursively presented as the cause of poverty, which are exterior to capitalist identity, but also external to the victims of poverty. Marxist ideology, as an illustration, is posited as a external exterior antagonism, enforced onto those in poverty.In contrast, an internal exterior antagonism is a cause of poverty (exterior to capitalism) which has been produced by those in poverty e.g. poor work ethic or corrupt governance.

Natural/historical antagonisms are perhaps the most powerful explanatory force in that they are perceived to be beyond politics. Jared Diamond's text 'Guns, Germs and Steel' is an element of this modality of discourse. Here, Diamond suggests that global distribution of wealth has been caused by various historical/geographical factors. This sort of antagonism removes the political tension from the discourse. Poverty then becomes a matter of the super-ego; a paternal responsibility.

The final salient factor in development discourse is interior antagonisms. Interior antagonisms are discourses that battle for the hegemonic space within the empty signifier 'development'. A prime example is Joseph Stiglitz's 'Globalisation's and its discontents'. Here Stiglitz's attributes the continued existence of poverty to poor policies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as opposed to Stiglitz's World Bank.

The collective effect of these antagonisms is to give contingent cause to poverty. This is the role of ideology; to reproduce the gap between symptom and abstract universality in a more palpable manner. The role of ideological critique than becomes not to uncover something new, but the disturbing hidden underside of what is already known. In my next piece I will investigate the work of leftist/anti-capitalists’ on the relationship between poverty and wealth.

'These are my principles and if you don't like them...well, I have others' Groucho Marx

What is interesting me at the moment is the ideological production of capitalism. The signifier ‘Capitalism’ itself does not seem to be discursive articulated. Instead any number of discursive positions take its place, within a formal range. Few are brazen enough to speak of capital directly. Capital seems to operate like the human body- the body is never naked in public, rather it is the clothes which define its form. Despite this outward appearance, the body in its most basic form is our means of enjoyment and reproduction. The operation is the same with capitalism. Few would identify openly as capitalist, rather they identify with a mediating discourse which takes a place within the system of production and consumption.

In spite of history suggesting that America’s military interventions are dominated by a desire to maintain capitalism, one can only image the anxiety if George Bush declared that he invaded Iraq in the name of capitalism. Democracy is virtuous, global security is acceptable, national security controversial but widely acknowledged. Invasion in the name of capitalism would, I imagine, almost be the end of the Bush administration. Perhaps one could suggest that capitalism is the concrete universal of democracy. Furthermore, this example suggests two additional points. Firstly, it seems that capitalism is a formally empty signifying system (much like an empty signifier, but on a more complex scale). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we must ask why it is that capitalism operates only through its instantiation in ideological content which appears somewhat divorced from its ultimate form.

Capitalism, as the symbolic Real, has to take on a number of different demands which at a base level may be quite different from the essential aim of capitalism (profit). These demands, however, are able to be rearticulated as congruent with capitalism, in ideology at least. A quick glance at the McDonalds New Zealand website acts as an example. McDonalds New Zealand, it seems, is involved in community development, “delicious menu choices that cater to your individual tastes and dietary needs” sponsorship and ‘exciting careers’. One could be forgiven for mistaking McDonalds for as a community orientation association.

This ideology appears to create a distance from the hidden underside of production. Corporate ideology maintains the jouissance of consumption whilst taking on various super-ego demands. Profit, it seems, does not come into it. But production is hardly hidden. Most of us notice that ‘we’ go to work each day and that others do the same. So is production hidden at all, or is it that capitalist ideology simply promotes its more pleasurable element? Or is it that certain elements of production are hidden, that production is presented in terms of consumption, without open reference to the goals of production. Nonetheless, in the past capitalism was production orientated so obviously capitalism can operate under these conditions.

At this stage, as I am sure you can perceive, I am not quite sure what to do with these thoughts. They do appear important in some regard though. Specifically, I would like to know why it is that in content capitalist ideology is expressed in a manner so removed from what we can analytically decipher as the capitalist form.

Update

My question is ultimately a sociological one; I am investigating the production of shared social life (universality). Through the use of psychoanalytic theory, my research to date has focused on the exclusions which are necessary for the constitution and maintenance of an abstract capitalist universal imagery. So far my focus has been on the manner in which hegemony is maintained through ideological construction of exceptions. In particular I have considered the role of enjoyment in stabilising the relationship between identity and non-identity.

More specifically, in seeking to understand the maintenance of universality, I have theorised (without coming to a definite conclusion) around the opportunities that exist for producing political change. Change has been considered at two levels, political alterations which revise the hegemonic balance and more radical change which undermines the fundamental basis of the social.

The latter notion of change has been my predominant focus. Revisionist change is relatively common place. In contrast, radical change is literally an impossible task. This impossibility conditions are produced by the stabilising role of ideology in its treatment of exceptions. Within a universalising discourse there are always multiple points of difference/antagonism. These points can be defined as follows;
- Constitutive outside; that which is external. Excluded and re-produced as a threat.
- The non-operative inside; Discursive elements within a discourse that may contradict the central demands of the abstract universal, yet do not compete for the place of universality. These demands may be articulated in a reduced form within capitalism or more simply lie under the radar. If they attempt to battle for the place of universality they will most likely be represented as a threat and produced as a constitutive outside.
- Symptoms; points of anxiety within the universal. Symptoms are evidence of the necessary exclusions that are internal to the universal.
- The concrete universal; Necessary exclusion upon which the discourse is based, yet cannot be acknowledged within the universal.

The role of ideology is to maintain and stabilise these threats. Predominately this occurs by including the elements within the universalising discourse (reproduced as congruent within the abstract universal) or excluding and positivising the demand as a threat. Green ideology is an example of this process. Capitalism has dealt with Green ideology either by including it within the marketplace (‘sustainable development’) or externalising it as a threat (‘luddites’ and ‘watermelons’).

This interpretation is not at all new; it formed the basis for my Masterate research, where I went into more detail around the operation of ideology. Nevertheless, I find it important to remind myself of the fundamental direction of my research. This year I have attempted to extend this approach to a sustained analysis of capitalism, which in my opinion is lacking from the literature.

My primary task has been to consider the ontological status of capitalism. There are three predominant positions within the theoretical literature;
- Capitalism is a hegemonic discourse
- Capitalism is a ‘master’ hegemonic discourse
- Capitalism is the symbolic Real.

My research so far has suggested that capitalism is not just a hegemonic discourse, rather it grounds the very place of hegemony, for the reasons I have outlined above. That is capitalism has hegemonised the place of hegemony and appears to have a response prepared for every threat to the system. Following this, we should not focus on the contingent battle for hegemony, but rather the exclusions which have produced the very conditions of universalisation.

Whether capitalism is the symbolic Real or more simply a master form of hegemony is a more complex issue. Analytically, I am not sure that there is much difference between the positions. Both suggest that it is capital that dominated the symbolic realm. Capital as the symbolic Real suggests that there is nothing outside of capital. As I have noted earlier, this is not the case, the symbolic realm is riddled with various points of difference, antagonism and anxiety. This does not rule out capitalism as the Real. Rather it puts the focus on the relationship between the terms ‘symbolic’ and ‘Real’. The symbolic Real is that which provides the background for all symbolisation, whether that symbolisation strictly fits with the symbolic Real is not overly important. What is structurally significant is that each discourse inherits a position within the symbolic Real, which determines in the last instance. Additionally, labelling capital as the symbolic Real has a strong affective demand which emphasises its dominance.

As a consequence of the ontological status of capital, no alternative positive political position can be constructed to ‘complete’ with capital for the place of hegemony. Such positivisations will only serve to maintain the place of capital. Instead, what is required to produce the kind of fundamental change which would displace capital as the place of universalisation is a form of critique which changes the relationship between the universal and its exception. This occurs through two mechanisms, one stemming from the increasing salience of the exception (e.g. climate change) and the other from a destabilisation of the process of ideology which deals with these exceptions.

The form of critique can be labelled ‘ethical’. Such a critique requires a strong, concrete knowledge of the discourse at the centre of critique. In this thesis, I plan to both establish such knowledge of capitalism and extend my grasp of ethical critique, particularly in terms of identity and non-identity within capitalism and its relationship to enjoyment. The central tools I will use for this task are Psychoanalysis and Marxism. This will involve a through knowledge of both discourse as well as the various forms of articulation that have occurred between them.