Thesis update: Confirmation document

1. Field of Inquiry

My thesis is broadly positioned within the field of political psychoanalysis. This field has since the 1990s been dominated by Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian psychoanalyst and social theorist. Žižek’s thought builds upon the work of post-Freudian psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. Whilst Lacan has been Žižek’s central influence, his work remains remarkably eclectic. As well as Lacan, Žižek is also a reader of German Idealist philosopher Georg Hegel and takes guidance from various forms of Marxism, most notably Leninism. These influences have meant that Žižek’s work, and political psychoanalysis as a whole, has become a wide ranging discipline. While this has allowed its influence to be projected into a number of spheres, political psychoanalysis, at least of the Žižekian ‘brand’, has not been able to develop a settled or hegemonic position. The instability of political psychoanalytic philosophy has left a gap in the literature in regards to political action, amongst other things. It is this gap, particularly in regards to the critique of capitalism, which I am seeking to examine.

Psychoanalysis as a properly political tool has only been a relatively recent phenomenon, one that is characterised by Žižek’s work, although others before him, such as Fredric Jameson, deserve acknowledgement[i]. Psychoanalysis was originally developed as a form of clinical analysis, firstly by Sigmund Freud and then Lacan. Lacan re-read Freud, adding a theory of language which built upon the insights of both structuralism and post-structuralism. Lacan’s move to place language – as a social mechanism – at the centre of the psyche, allowed the potential for psychoanalysis to move beyond the clinical and into social and political analysis. However, although Lacan began to address psychoanalysis as a mode of social analysis in his later thought[ii], it has been primarily through the work of Žižek that Lacanian theory has become recognised as a legitimate tool for socio-political analysis[iii].

Conversely, psychoanalytic political theory has not sought to strictly correlate social life with the clinical patient, analysing the social as a patient who might, for example, be suffering from collective hysteria. Rather, because of the constitutive influence of language, the two – the individual and the social, the subject and object – are inseparable; the individual can only come into being through integration into language and the hegemonic discourses which structure social life. Likewise, social life is constituted by the presence of individual bodies; bodies which experience themselves only through language and a bodily excess which Lacan labelled jouissance. In turn these experiences add to the body of language which Lacan conceptualised as ‘the discourse of the Other’. Operating at the intersection of the body and socio-political life – a gap that Žižek, following Lacan, labels the subject – psychoanalysis has become a properly sociological discourse.

This gap produces a radical incompleteness within both the psyche and the social, a constitutive incompleteness which allows for movement, avoiding the isomorphism that would have arisen from a straight correlation. Lacan’s insistence on this negative ontology as the constitutive feature of the human condition does not allow his formulation of psychoanalysis to fit easily into traditional political philosophy. Traditional political philosophy focuses on positivised normative positions which allow for the postulation of conceptions of shared social life. Instead, as I shall expand on in Section Two, Lacanian political philosophy, particularly that practiced by Žižek, emphasises the illusory nature of these conceptions.

Žižek takes this insight further through his reading of Hegel’s dialectics. He insists that not only is every political position based on an illusion (language being ultimately contingent and requiring partial imaginary fixations to achieve meaningful stability) but these illusionary horizons of understanding are constituted upon a disavowed exclusion. Therefore, not only are any political formations which postulate positions of universality necessarily illusionary, they are also violently exclusive. The political connotations of such an insight remain unsettled. Debate still rages over whether psychoanalysis is politically conservative – because of its rejection of the possibility of utopia and progressive politics in its positivising form – or radical – if psychoanalysis reveals that nothing is natural, that anything is possible, in particular the revolution of the horizon of understanding[iv].

Thus Žižek’s work suggests that the value of psychoanalysis as a modality of political philosophy does not lie in the production of collective illusions, but rather in their deconstruction[v]. Where others argue that Lacanian psychoanalysis is not a properly political discourse because it is unable to produce an ideological conception of shared social life (Homer, 1996: 14), Žižek contends that the political utility of psychoanalysis goes beyond such conceptions[vi]. Psychoanalysis is political because of its emphasis on negative ontology – psychoanalysis examines the manner in which inherently contingent social constructions achieve relative stability. More than that though, psychoanalysis also exposes that which is not contingent in social constructions; the disavowed exclusions upon which social constructions are founded.

Although Žižek’s work has consistently followed this Lacanian logic of social analysis, his focus has not always been overtly political. In his first English-language text The Sublime Object of Ideology, Žižek stated that his aim is to ‘serve as an introduction to the fundamental concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis…accomplish a ‘return to Hegel’…[and] contribute to the theory of ideology’(Zizek, 1989: 7). Indeed, much of Žižek’s early work focuses on ideological analyses, particularly of popular culture (Zizek, 1991b, 1997, 1992) although these texts often had a political edge (see Zizek, 1991a).

I Although Žižek has focused more on capitalism in his later texts, his interest in Marxism has been evident since his initial work. As an exemplar, in the opening chapter of The Sublime Object of Ideology, he claims that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian notion of the symptom. Žižek’s Marxism will be discussed in detail in the following sections, as it constitutes a core element of my thesis. It was not until the publication of The Ticklish Subject in 1999, however, that Žižek’s work became explicitly political. Additionally, Žižek began identifying global capitalism as his primary political target. In the introduction to this text, Žižek stated;

“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”(Zizek, 1999:4)

Thus, the central emphasis of my thesis correlates most strongly with Žižek’s later work, although some of his most interesting theoretical thought was established in his earlier books, particularly The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) and For They Know Not What They Do (1991).

As Žižek’s work has become more popular (and controversial, owing largely to his political turn), a range of secondary theorists and critics have developed around him. Most prominent amongst these commentators are Glyn Daly, Jodi Dean and Yannis Stavrakakis. Žižek has also become involved in a long running dialogue with post-Marxist discourse theorist and one time ally, Ernesto Laclau[vii]. Žižek has also been the subject of a rush of (often critical) introductory texts, including those by Butler (2005), Dean (2006), Kay (2003), Myers (2003), Parker (2004), Sharpe (2004) and a collaboration between Daly and Žižek (2004). Additionally a number of edited volumes have been published (Boucher, Glynos, & Sharpe, 2005; Bowman & Stamp, 2007; R. Butler & Stephens, 2005, 2006; Wright & Wright, 1999) and a online journal, the International Journal of Žižek Studies, was established in 2007[viii].



























2. Conceptual Framework

My thesis is driven by a number of theoretical convictions. These convictions stem from a commitment to Lacanian psychoanalysis, as conceived by Žižek. In my work thus far, and in the remainder of the thesis, I will continue to interpret and advance Žižek’s thought, but I believe that the thesis will remain within the broad field determined by Žižek – with the notable exception of Question Two (political action against capitalism), as detailed below in Section Four. There are three central Žižekian categories that structure my thought. These categories are as follows;

- Lacan’s negative ontology and the Real and Jouissance
- Dialectical materialism and universality
- Ideological Fantasy


I will discuss each in turn.

Lacan’s negative ontology and the Real


Lacanian ontology positions ‘lack’ as the fundamental element of the human condition. Lack is produced because language creates a mediating barrier between the subject and the world of things, effectively ‘castrating’ the subject upon entry into the symbolic order. Any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which language refers. Lacan called this gap the Real[ix]. The Real is not only lack, it is also excess. The Real exists as excess because of the manner in which castration, the source of lack, is itself repressed. As a consequence of that repression, the subject is caught in a condition of seeking to regain the absent, but impossible fullness, which existed for them before entering language ‘before the letter’. Lacan called this state Jouissance.

Jouissance is a troubling kind of pleasure; because it represents both the possibility and impossibility of returning to the Real. This paradoxical state is maintained by the presentation to the subject of various objects that can operate as substitutes for the primal lack, known by Lacan as objet a or the empty signifier. In an alternative mode, rather than being presented as objects that can suture lack, a range of objects emerge that come to be postulated as being responsible for thwarting the subject’s quest to achieve a condition that is without lack, as such they are posited as causing the negativity that is inherent in the social. These objects are antagonisms and symptoms, which, despite their presentation within the social as elements that are to be eliminated, are actually sites of enjoyment.

Universality

Žižek’s work on universality represents the core elements of my concepual framework. Žižek splits the idea of universality into an abstract and a concrete form (producing an abstract universal and a concrete universal). The abstract universal provides the hegemonic imaginary horizons – the signifiers and images the support any concept of shared social life – that people use to guides their actions, e.g. the concept of individual freedom or that of human rights. This universal imaginary stands in for the lack that constitutes the social domain. The abstract universal is normally based around an empty signifier, or an objet a, which in Lacanian terms provides a suture for that primal lack and, because of the sense of fullness that it gives, provides the subject with jouissance.

In contrast to the condensing effect of the abstract horizon, the universal exception acts as a dislocating factor again this horizon. The exception, known as the concrete universal, lies on the ‘flip-side’ of the parallax of universality, being ‘the other’ to the abstract universal. In this sense of it being the ‘flip-side’ of the coin, there is no connection between the abstract and concrete universals, no symbolic point of translation. Vitally, however, they nevertheless remain linked as a totality. Although the concrete universal exists as the singular exception to the universal horizon, at the same time this exception comes to exceed that horizon; it is necessary for the continued functioning of the abstract universal.

The absolute poverty of many Third world workers is an example of the concrete universal. These workers, not so much those who toil in sweatshops, but those outside of sweatshops – the reserve army of unemployed workers whose presence allows for the continuation of sweatshop conditions – are necessary for the efficient functioning of capitalism and its abstract universal horizons. These horizons, which in capitalism we may consider to be structured under such notions as ‘wealth’ and ‘progress’, require the presence – and most likely death – of these workers, yet this condition cannot be acknowledged within capitalist ideology; it is the concrete universal – the exception which represents the unbearable Truth of the abstract universal horizon.

Because abstract horizons rely on the exclusion of particular elements (they being ‘the exception’ to those abstract horizons) for their stability, strong tension exists between the exception (the concrete universal) and the abstract universal horizon. However, as no means exist for translating between the two, this tension comes out through the effect that the Real has upon the abstract universal.

The irresolvable nature of the difference between the two modalities of universality gets enclosed within, and thus occluded by, a particular element, the symptom. The symptom is the link between the two areas of analytical investment for a political approach drawing upon psychoanalysis; the abstract universal imaginary and the concrete universal. Within the abstract universal, the symptom embodies the universal exception and thus the Real. As such, the domestication of this potentially dislocating Real element in the symptom is vital for the smooth functioning of the abstract universal.

Yet, despite the disturbing presence of the symptom, its existence is still necessary for the functioning of the universal horizon. The symptom keeps a distance between the universal imaginary and the contradiction between the fantasmatic postulation of the posivitity of the social and the inherent negativity of the Real. On the other hand the presence of the symptom creates a gap within the totality of universality, revealing the presence of the Real and the concrete universal. Thus whilst symptoms are enjoyed, they are also potentially the cause of anxiety and dislocation

Ideological Fantasy

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

The reconstruction of ideology has been a vital move in psychoanalytic thought. Ideology had been predominantly presented in modernist thought as distinct from ‘reality’ in the sense that it was an illusory appearance as opposed to essence, at which modernism was driving. For this reason, with the advent of post-structuralist thought and the related post-modern journey into relativism, ideology as a concept was rejected (Stavrakakis, 1997: 118-122). Through an operation of determinate reflection in which the very negation of ideology has become its positive condition, Lacanian theory has transcended these definitions of ideology and has rehabilitated the term. Ideology stills operates as misrecognition, but of a different nature as ideology is transferred from the epistemological to the ontological (Glynos, 2001: 192). Rather than a distinction between reality and ideology, ideology is seen as the guarantor of the consistency of the social; there is no reality without ideology. Because all discourses are ultimately dislocated and lacking, ideology provides the role of covering this lack, and hence the contingent political nature of any such ideological construction (2001: 191). Thus through ideology the subject suffers from misrecognition of the negative ontology of the social (Stavrakakis, 1997: 123).The key role of ideology in the construction of normality, it can thus be surmised, is to include and pacify the symptom through its staging of the symptom within fantasy formations to which the subject holds. It is the symptom that disrupts the consistency of the social and thus the presence of the symptom must be negated (1997: 128). Paradoxically, in order to achieve this, the symptom must be included in the ideological fantasy of the abstract universal as a point of enjoyment. As Glyn Daly states “The central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through simultaneously producing the ‘threat’ to that closure” (Daly, 1999a: 220). The fantasmatic construction, and deconstruction, of the symptom is of vital political importance.

3. Methodology

A theoretical thesis such as mine does not have a methodology in the same sense that an empirical thesis might. If my thesis can be said to have a methodology, it is as an extension of my conceptual framework. That said, I do have an approach to the analysis of social forms which will be applied throughout the thesis, in particular in regards to Question One (see Section Four). This approach is perhaps less of a methodology and more of a ‘discursive strategy’ for analysis. The difference is not merely semantic, but rather seeks to avoid the postivising nature of fixed methodological positions.

The discursive strategy relies heavily on Žižek’s approach to the political and philosophy in general as outlined in The Parallax View (Zizek, 2006). Žižek describes his approach as being a ‘short-circuit’[x]. A short circuit approach is a critical reading of a political power apparatus such that the hidden underside of its discursive expression is revealed, through which the apparatus functions. Hence; “(T)he reader should not simply have learned something new; the point is rather to make them aware of another – disturbing - side of something they knew all the time” (2006: ix). Žižek believes, and it will be the position adopted throughout my thesis, that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the privileged instrument of the short-circuit approach, although it is necessary to note that a short-circuit relies heavily on Hegelian dialectical logic.The ‘short-circuit’ approach aims to ‘practice’ concrete universality by confronting a universal with its ‘unbearable example’ (2006:13). This is the core orientation at the heart of the argumentation in this thesis; the identification of the internal fault points within a political formation. These internal limit points -symptoms- can be revealed as constitutive of the universal horizon constructed by the discourse and thus a concrete universal.

In order to produce a short-circuit analysis, one cannot simply interpret the discursive field. Rather, as Stavrakakis suggests (1997:129), the role of critical discourse is to deconstruct the fantasmatic background that sutures the social and to find the symptomatic elements that signal the internal point of failure – the limit point – of the abstract imaginary. Similarly, Žižek contends “(T)he aim of the critique of ideology is the analysis of an ideological edifice, is to extract this symptomatic kernel which the official, public, ideological text simultaneously disavows and needs for its undisturbed functioning” (1996:3).

As a consequence of the fantasmatic background of a universal edifice, short-circuit critique comes to involve two important moves. The first is to reveal the contingency of every social construction, to demonstrate that reality is neither natural nor positive. The second is to consider the manner in which an ideology grips its subjects; the operation by which political formations maintain their stability, despite this apparent contingency. The substance that achieves this outcome, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, is jouissance.

It is this short-circuit approach, along with the previously detailed conceptual framework, which will direct my theoretical investigations throughout the course of the thesis. This will be particularly reflected in regards to my first question, where I will seek to understand the contours of global capitalism by highlighting the symptomatic kernels that are disavowed from capitalism, as well as the ideological structures and economies of enjoyment (jouissance) that are in operation within capitalism.





















4. Core Research Questions


In my thesis, I investigate two fundamental questions, whose articulation has been influenced by my engagement with the work of Žižek;

What is signified by ‘capitalism’?
Upon what basis might capitalist organisation be most effectively challenged?

The conditions of possibility for these two questions themselves lie within the following theoretical line of inquiry;

What are the prospects for Marxist theory and political action after the ‘turn to language’, in particular Lacan’s conception of ontology?

I will discuss each of these questions below.

Question 1: What is signified by ‘capitalism’? A critical Žižekian theory of capitalism

In this question I apply Žižek’s conceptual framework for the purpose of generating a theory of capitalism. This theory does not seek to wholly describe or map capitalism, but rather to identify the core structural elements that allow us to identify the signifier ‘capitalism’[xi]. I believe that this question is an original endeavour, moreover such an identification is an academic requirement for theoretical ‘rigour’ and one that is vital for identifying the coordinates for the debate in Question 2.

A thorough and systematic analysis of capitalism has not occurred within the coordinates of Lacanian theory. There have been some notable discussions of capitalism from a broadly psychoanalytic perspectives, most salient of this Michael Hardt and Antionio Negri’s Empire(2000) and Gilles Deleuzes and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (1977). I will engage with these texts within my thesis, but neither has achieved lasting academic or political status. Nor do they work from the same Lacanian or Žižekian framework in which my thesis is situated.

Žižek has come the closest to producing an analysis, particularly through his work on Marxism[xii]. At various moments throughout his oeuvre Žižek produces ‘ad hoc’ analyses of capitalism often as an illustration of an element of Marxist theory or as part of a larger analysis. From this, one can piece together a rough Žižekian theory of capitalism, although it is not systematic. Matthew Sharpe, a commentator on Žižek, produced an interesting analysis of Žižek’s conception of capitalism, asking whether Žižek did indeed have a theory of capitalism. He concluded that whilst Žižek calls for such a theory, he often hesitates in his critiques of capitalism, either making ad hoc analyses, ‘journalistic’ comments or directing the reader to another source. Sharpe contends that whilst these forms of analysis may be at times interesting, they have little in common with Žižek’s Lacanian framework (Sharpe, 2004:196-7). Thus the literature remains open for a Lacanian or Žižekian analysis of capitalism. Indeed, I believe, with Sharpe, that if Žižek continues to cite capitalism as the core target of his political and theoretical endeavour, such a theory is necessary.

The second rationale for selecting this question stems from Žižek’s conceptual framework, which will be discussed in more detail in Section Two. This framework has the potential to consider capitalism in a manner which subverts its understanding of itself. Under the hegemonic capitalist logic, a logic which is shared by positivistic social science, elements which appear strictly external to capitalism are considered to be outside of the influence of capitalism. Third world poverty, as an illustration, is not considered to be a necessary element of capitalism. Rather, these economies are considered to be outside of capitalism; they are poor because they are not capitalist enough. Such is the logic of the term ‘developing economy’. In contrast, Žižek asserts that every ideology is constituted by an exclusion which is necessarily disavowed; it cannot occur within the terms of the hegemonic horizon. Taking this logic further, with the assistance of Marxist analysis, one can consider that Third World poverty is necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. Capitalism may not have explicitly or directly created this poverty but it does require it for its own reproduction.

If developing countries were to become fully developed, taking on the levels of consumption of a mid-range developed economy such as New Zealand, official estimates from the New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) suggests that another five planets would be required to support the necessary levels of resource consumption (PCE, 2005). Additionally, in order to keep costs of production down, capitalism requires workers of the Third World to remain at subsistence wages. These wages are able to stay low because of the over supply of workers in these economies.

This is the true horror of capitalism, the disavowed exclusion which is constitutive of the ideology. For sweatshops to exist, and they are a historically constant element of capitalism[xiii], there has to be an oversupply of workers for employed workers to accept their working conditions; if they refuse to work, there is always another from the ‘reserve army’ to take their place. This excess, the unemployed sweatshop worker, the poorest of the poor, are the disavowed foundation of capitalism, but also its motor.

One can fairly easily extend this logic as part of a Lacanian theory of capitalism If capitalism is an empty signifying system, one that can reproduce itself in the name of profit in an infinite number of cultural contexts, then these excluded workers, which we can roughly label ‘class’, and which take the place of the Real becoming what Žižek calls (following Hegel) the concrete universal.[xiv] If this is the case, the final element of the three Lacanian ‘registers’ is liberal democracy, which functions in the place of the imaginary register. Liberal democracy, with its cousin, multi-culturalism, provides the imaginary element of global capitalism; it is capitalism in its more palatable form. Indeed the signifier ‘capitalism’ is rarely invoked as the signifier of the western system of society. There appears to be something disturbing in the term; one could never use it as the justification of a political action. The Bush administration could use democracy as reason for invading Iraq, or even national security, certainly within the United States. To cite capitalism, however, would be hugely controversial.

This is not to suggest, however, that capitalism is somehow considered to be the enemy of the western people. If belief is best revealed through behaviour rather than ideals, then capitalism is at the very core of western society through the performance of consumption. Consumption, as the fetishism of commodities, acts as what Žižek refers to as the ‘spontaneous consciousness of ideology’ (Zizek, 1994: 14); that is, consumption shapes, and has become, our common sense construction of the world.

Finally, I believe it is necessary to produce a detailed understanding of global capitalism in order to properly investigate the second of my enquiries: the political possibilities for radical action against capitalism. By understanding the structure of global capitalism, we are better positioned to understand both the reasons why we must act against capitalism and the potential opportunities, and dead ends, for radical political action.

Thus I feel the question ‘What is signified by Capitalism? , is a particularly valuable one. It is, I believe that the position from which I am investigating this question makes it an original enquiry, but one that does not require much of an extension of the Žižekian conceptual framework, rather its application to a new area.

If this is the case, however, we must consider why this question has not been previously asked and answered. There are two especially salient reasons. Firstly, Žižek is notoriously erratic in his work. He rarely systematically reflects on his objects of inquiry or enters into substantive concrete analysis in any depth. Thus, to some extent this section of my thesis would be doing Žižek’s ‘dirty work’. Although, of course, this work will be completed in a critical lens, rather then attempting to parrot and reproduce Žižek. While Žižek’s work provides an insightful conceptual framework for understanding capitalism, it is a framework that I have always interpreted in my own manner and a framework which encourages such interpretations.

Additionally, Žižek and other theorists working within post-foundational social theory are well aware of the epistemological problems that stem from attempting to name and reify an object. Such is the issue with asking the question ‘What is capitalism?’ One can never fully ‘map’ any object; any representation will never be fully representative. Nevertheless, I would not like to fall into a refusal to identify an object because of the necessary imperfections of such an identification. I do not wish to explicitly positivise capitalism, however, in order to properly critique an object it is a theoretical necessity to understand it, even if that understanding necessary reproduces the limitations of language.

Question 2. Upon what basis might capitalist organisation be most effectively challenged?[xv]

Building from the previous question, in this question I seek to uncover, evaluate and prescribe the available actions against capitalism. This is a much more demanding task than Question 1, one without a readily available solution[xvi]. The question of ethics and normativity in relation to political action is one that has plagued socio-political psychoanalytic theory (see Bellamy, 1993; Brockelman, 2003; Browning, 1991; Daly, 1999b; Devenney, 2001; Homer, 1996; Laclau, 2000; Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2005, 2006; Stavrakakis, 1999; Zupancic, 2000, 2006).

Žižek, following Lacan, refuses to posit any kind of normative position. Instead, his political interventions consist of ‘short-circuit’ critiques aimed at unveiling the disavowed foundations of ideology (see Section Three). This position models that of the Lacanian ethics of psychoanalysis, which force the subject into an encounter with the Real and the Truth of their own position. Lacanian psychoanalytic ethics do not seek to eradicate the gap between the symbolic and Real (for example, of attempting to bring the exception into existence), but rather come to terms with this fundamental separation and acknowledging the constitutive status of this exception (Zizek, 1989: 3).[xvii]

Some theorists utilising Lacan have sought to develop political and ethical positions steaming from Lacan, such as Stavrakakis’s ‘Beyond the ethics of harmony’ (Stavrakakis, 1999), Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s ‘Radical Democracy’(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) project and Laclau’s more recent articulations of Populism (Laclau, 2005, 2006) and Alenka Zupancic’s ‘Ethics of the Real’(Zupancic, 2000).Whilst these points provide some valuable insights, none have gripped either the political or theoretical arenas, nor have they been applied to capitalism or political in any form.

This section is by far the most open of any of the thesis and I expect that my understanding of the issues involved will expand rapidly with my knowledge of the literature. Nonetheless, it remains an important, if not THE important question to answer

Question 3. What, after the turn to language, is the value of Marxist theory for the critique of capitalist political economy and radical politics?

This question underpins both of the previous questions and as such is at the core of my theoretical inquiry. My conceptual framework (see Section Two) is dominated by psychoanalytic theory but seeks to engage with Marxist theory in order to produce a critique of global capitalism. The core dilemma with this fusion is, ‘If we accept the ontological commitments and implications of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory – most notably the effect of the Real and the associated Lacanian logic of the signifier – can Marxism, or at least the Marxist tradition, be used as an interpretive, critical or normative framework?

This question reflects on both questions in different ways. As will be expanded further in Section Five, Žižek has utilised and interpreted a number of Marxist concepts through his Lacanian/Hegelian framework. These include commodity fetishism, ideology, class and the crucial link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment. Žižek also credits Marx with inventing the Lacan notion of the symptom (Zizek, 1989). These concepts, however, are dominated by their psychoanalytic conception which has left critics with the role of questioning in what sense notions like class are in any way Marxist (Sharpe, 2004)[xviii]. Nonetheless, as suggested in Section Five, Žižek’s combination of ‘psycho-Marxism’ does produce some intriguing possibilities for the critique of capitalist political economy where traditional Marxist categories, given a Lacanian twist, open up new possibilities for analysis.

Yet Žižek conception of psycho-Marxism remains fundamentally Lacanian, predicated upon Lacan’s negative ontology. This negative ontology is at odds with Marxist political economy, particularly in terms of political practice. For Žižek, Marx’s key error is that he thought that he could remove the symptomatic aspects of the capitalist mode of production (class) and replace them with a socialist and ultimately communist mode of political economy, whilst maintaining the same levels of productivity. Žižek contends that what appears to be an obstacle (private property and profit) to the full realisation of economic productivity, is actually the inherent condition (Zizek, 1989: 53). Žižek is subject to no such imaginary illusions. As such, he takes little guidance from Marx in terms of political action. That said, Žižek has (although less often in his recent work) turned to Lenin as an example of the Lacanian Act and has even evoked Stalin, if he is in a particularly cantankerous mood (Zizek, 2001, 2002a, 2002b).

Thus, it appears that psycho-Marxism (which has a long history, as discussed in Section Five), has much potential for understanding the structures of capitalist ideology –
certainly more than its cousin, post-Marxist ‘disco-Marxism’[xix], as practiced by Laclau. Yet, when it comes to political action, it appears that Marxism has little to offer psychoanalytic theory.


























5. Literature Review

Because of difficulties formalising my research question(s), I have not conducted a literature review around these questions to the depth I would prefer[xx]. Instead my work has focused predominately on Žižek’s interpretations of Marxism. That focus will be reflected in this section. However, as can be noted in Sections Six and Seven, I do plan to thoroughly cover the history of both disciplines individually and their fusion into ‘psycho-Marxism’.

Attempts to combine psychoanalysis and Marxism into a viable explanatory and prescriptive political project have a long history, beginning with the ‘Freudian Marxism’ of theorists such as Wilhelm Reich, Siegfried Bernfeld, Erich Fromm, and Paul Federn. Following these somewhat vulgar attempts at fusion, which focused on supplementing Marxism with a Freudian theory of subjectivity, the Frankfurt school developed a neo-Marxist integration of Freudian psychoanalysis (Miklitsch, 1998: 228). The Frankfurt school theorists sought to supplement Marxism with other intellectual movements, most notably psychoanalysis, from the 1930s in order to respond to the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in the face of the continued presence and morphing shape of capitalism (Sharpe, 2004: 10). In particular, the Frankfurt school turned to psychoanalytic conceptions of culture to explain the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. As Žižek states;

“ In the history of Marxism, the reference to psychoanalysis played a precise strategic role: psychoanalysis was expected to “close the gap” by explaining why, despite the presence of ‘objective’ conditions for the revolutionary transformation, individuals willingly persisted in their enslavement to the ruling ideology” (Zizek, 1998: 235)

If this could be described as the first phase of ‘psycho-Marxism’, according to Miklitsch, the second phase is dominated by Louis Althusser’s structuralist revision of Marxism. Althusser’s return to Marx through psychoanalysis was the first to be dominated by Lacan, rather than Freud. As such, it cultivated a re-reading of Freud as well, framed in Lacanian terms. Lacan had already re-read Freud apres-coup via the turn to language of the latter half of the 20th century, characterised by the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. The focus on language as a structuring element of the human psyche has made psychoanalysis a necessarily sociological investigation, one that could be integrated with Marxism not by way of adding a theory of the psyche, as in Freudian Marxism, but rather as an equal contribution to a theory of intersubjectivity.

Despite these developments, Psycho-Marxism in all its forms has not been able to envisage a movement beyond capitalism, which does not fall pray to the traps of totalitarian socialism, as Žižek himself acknowledges;

"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"(Zizek, 1999: 352-353)

While Žižek’s later work can be firmly located within this project, Žižek himself rarely systematically reflects on the genealogy of his work (Sharpe, 2004: 9). Nonetheless, Žižek’s work can be located in the tradition of Western Marxism, inherited from the Frankfurt school. Žižek, however, rarely discusses the Frankfurt school, and repeatedly disavows the status of ‘Cultural Studies’, a discipline established largely through the Frankfurt school.

Despite this rejection of Cultural Studies, perhaps Žižek’s most accepted role as a Marxist is as a theorist of capitalist consumer ideology, culture and enjoyment (Sharpe, 2005:9). Instead of the Frankfurt school, the tradition of psycho-Marxism which Žižek has most followed is Althusser, who was for a time banished to the theoretical netherlands (in part by his own critique) before being rehabilitated by Žižek, most notably in The Sublime Object of Ideology (Miklitsch, 1998: 228). Here, Žižek argues that Althusser’s work has been disavowed, particularly the debate between Althusser and Lacan, and masked by the division between Habermas and Foucault, because Althusser is the traumatic kernel that must be excluded from modern philosophy because of its association with radical Lacanian ethics, which break with the hegemonic logic of post-Marxist anti-essentialism (Zizek, 1989: 1).

Post-Marxism has structured both the intellectual and political world since Žižek began publishing in English. These publications, beginning in 1989, came after the fall of the Berlin wall and the associated collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (Sharpe, 2004), and notably after the publication of Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, which largely defined the post-Marxist discipline. As Žižek himself states, after the demise of actually existing Marxism, psycho-Marxism has taken on a different role. Instead of defensively supplementing Marxism, Post-Marxist psychoanalysis instead focuses on the role of the political, working with Laclau’s notion that ‘society doesn’t exist’, that is, that society is characterised by an unsymbolisable antagonism that prevents the fullness of society. Thus, any kind of essentialism, including Marxist historical materialism, is rejected.

For Laclau, and others working in his discursive arena, any reference to Marxism is limited only to the Marxist tradition. In contrast, Žižek’s use of Marxism attempts to restore the fullness of the tradition, even if this restoration occurs via a negatively charged ontological position which rejects strict Marxist essentialism. Instead, Žižek attempts to rehabilitate Marxist critique of political economy as a form of anti-capitalism political intervention by reference to a different kind of essentialism; the Lacanian Real.

The first hints of Žižek’s affinity with Marxism, occur in The Sublime Object of Ideology when he contends that for Lacan, Marx invented the symptom (Zizek, 1989: 11-53). 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, Žižek 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).

According to Žižek, 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, Žižek 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.

Žižek’s usage of Lacanian concepts, however, always comes with a Lacanian twist. This ‘twist’ is controversial, often moving the terms outside of strict Marxist usage. Class is an example of this movement. Žižek’s use of class signalled an increasing move into the Marxist tradition. His utilisation of class, however, differs markedly from the classical Marxist definition. 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. Some critics contend that Žižek does not adequately define his concept of class (Devenney, 2007: 54; Homer, 2001: 14; Sharpe, 2004: 203-4), others argue that Žižek’s Lacanian version of class is incommensurable with the Marxist tradition from which it stems and thus renders it politically redundant (Laclau, 2000: 206; Robinson & Tormey, 2005: 95-96).
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.































6. Chapter Plan

1. Introduction (5000 words)
2. Literature Review (15,000 words)

In this chapter I will review the background literature for my project, seeking to set the context for my inquiry. Specifically I seek to construct a basis for the core debates in this thesis. Essentially, the problems for using psychoanalysis for political enquiry, the problems of western marxism and the lack of radical conceptions of capitalism

a. Psychoanalytic Theory
b. Psychoanalysis and Politics
c. Progressions in Marxist theory
d. Psychoanalysis and Marxism
e. Contemporary perspectives on capitalism
f. Slavoj Žižek

3. Methodology/Conceptual foundations (20,000 words)

In this Chapter I will seek to outline the theoretical foundations of my investigation. These contours are largely shaped by Žižek. As such, the chapter will be directed towards a discussion of the key categories of his work in terms of my investigation in capitalism and the prospectives for political psychoanalysis.

a. Žižek
i. Ontology, the Real and influences
ii. Subjectivity
iii. Universality
iv. Ideology
v. Žižek’s theory of capitalism and Marxism

4. What is capitalism? (25,000 words)

Supported by discursive investigations into concrete areas of capitalism, this chapter seeks to answer one of the core questions of the thesis, ‘What is Capitalism?’ This is not a matter of mapping capitalism, but rather understanding the structures of capitalist discourse and ideology. This chapter will most likely be strongly supported by Žižek’s work, although investigating an area where Žižek’s work has not be applied in detail.

a. Investigation of the structure of 21st century capitalism, informed by my own critical take on Žižek’s psycho-marxism

5. Acting against capitalism (25,000 words)

Given the conclusions reached in Chapter 4, how can we act meaningfully against capitalism? This debate looks to reach some conclusion in regards to the normative deficit in post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. As such it seeks to go beyond the co-ordinates of Žižek’s work. This chapter also considers the ethical status of capitalism itself.

a. Psychoanalytic theories of the political/ethics/normativity
b. Žižek’s form of political intervention
c. Alenka Zupancic
d. Rethinking the notion of surplus

6. Conclusion (5000 words)








































7. Stages of Inquiry

Establish frame of reference (Completed 2007)
Žižek
Generate specific research questions (2007)
Undertake literature review in regards to those questions (partially complete)
Wider literature review – Feb- Oct 2008 (suspension for overseas travel, April/May 2008)
Psychoanalysis (Feb-Mar 08)
i. Freud (Feb)
ii. Lacan (March)
Political psychoanalysis (2006/7)
Marxism (June/July 08)
Marxism and Psychoanalysis (Aug-Oct 08)
i. Freud and Marx (Aug)
ii. The Frankfurt School (Aug/Sept)
iii. Fredric Jameson (Oct)
iv. Žižek (2007)
Write up Chapter 2 (Literature Review) –Nov 2008
Write up Chapter 3 (Conceptual framework) – Dec/Jan 2009
What is signified by ‘Capitalism’? – Feb- May 2009
Theoretical application
Discursive examination of the structures and exegencies of capitalism
Write up Chapter 4 (What is signified by ‘Capitalism’?) – Jun 2009
Acting against capitalism – July- Sept 2009
The discpline of political psychoanalysis in the context of capitalism
Ethics of psychoanalysis
i. Alenka Zupancic
ii. Rethinking the notion of surplus
Write up Chapter 5 (Acting against Capitalism) – Oct 2009
Rewrite Chapters 2 & 3 – Nov 2009
Write Introduction and Conclusion – Dec 2009
Editing/Tidying Up – Jan- Feb 2010

Finish Date: March 1, 2010 (including two month suspension, April/May 2008)





























8. List of publications and Presentations

Publications

Symptomatic Readings: Žižekian theory as a discursive strategy (Forthcoming, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Feburary 2008)

Howling at a Concrete Moon: Introduction to the Graduate Edition of IJZS (Forthcoming, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Feburary 2008)


Presentations

Capitalism and Ideological Critique, Social of Social and Cultural Studies Post-Graduate Conference September 2007, Massey University

'I Have A Hat, But I Have No Rabbit" Žižek, Capitalism And
Ideological Critique, The Australian Sociological Association and Sociological Association of Aoteroa New Zealand Joint Conference, Dec 2007, Auckland University


























9. Bibilography

Bellamy, E., J. (1993). Discourses of impossibility: Can psychoanalysis be political. Diacritics, 23(1), 24-38.
Boucher, G., Glynos, J., & Sharpe, M. (2005). Traversing the Fantasy; Critical Responses to Slavoj Zizek. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bowman, P., & Stamp, R. (Eds.). (2007). The Truth of Zizek. London: Continuum.
Brockelman, T. (2003). The failure of the radical democratic imaginary: Zizek versus Laclau and Mouffe on vestigial utopia. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 29(2).
Browning, D. S. (1991). Can Psychoanalysis Inform Ethics? If So, How? In E. Wallwork (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Zizek, S. (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Verso: London.
Butler, R. (2005). Slavoj Zizek: Live Theory. New York: Continuum.
Butler, R., & Stephens, S. (Eds.). (2005). Interrogating the Real. London: Continuum.
Butler, R., & Stephens, S. (Eds.). (2006). The Universal Exception: Selected Writings, Volume Two. London: Continuum.
Daly, G. (1999a). Ideology and it's paradoxes: Dimensions of Fantasy and Enjoyment. Journal of Political Ideologies, 4(2).
Daly, G. (1999b). Politics and the Impossible: Beyond Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction. Theory, Culture and Society, 16(4), 75-98.
Daly, G., & Zizek, S. (2004). Conversations with Zizek. London: Polity Press.
Dean, J. (2006). Zizek's Politics. New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Viking Press.
Devenney, M. (2001). Towards and Ethics of Incommensurability. Strategies, 14(2).
Devenney, M. (2007). Zizek's Passion for the Real. In P. Bowman & R. Stamp (Eds.), The Truth of Zizek. London: Continuum.
Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Freud, S. (1922). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Boni and Liveright Publishers.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilisation and its Discontents. In M. Calarco & P. Atterton (Eds.), The Continental Ethics Reader (pp. pp.233-239). New York: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1939). Moses and Monotheism. London: The Hogarth press and the Institute of psycho-analysis.
Glynos, J. (2001). The Grip of Ideology: A Lacanian approach to the theory of ideology. Journal of Political Ideologies, 6(2), 191-214.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Havard University Press.
Homer, S. (1996). Psychoanalysis, Representation, Politics: On the (im)possibility of a psychoanalytic theory of ideology? Paper presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Universities Association for Psychoanalytic Studies.
Homer, S. (2001). It's the political economy, stupid! On Zizek's Marxism. Radical Philosophy, 108(July/August).
Kay, S. (2003). Zizek : a critical introduction / Sarah Kay. Cambridge, UK : Malden, MA :: Polity ; Distributed in the USA by Blackwell Pub.,.
Laclau, E. (2000). Constructing Universality. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Zizek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason / Ernesto Laclau. New York :: Verso,.
Laclau, E. (2006). Why constructing a people is the main task of radical politics. Critical Inquiry, 32.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Miklitsch, R. (1998). Introduction. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Myers, T. (2003). Slavoj Zizek. London: Routledge.
Parker, I. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction. London Pluto Press.
PCE. (2005). See Change: Learning and education for sustainability: Parlimentary Comissioner for the Environment.
Robinson, A. (2004). The Politics of Lack. BJPIR, 6.
Robinson, A., & Tormey, S. (2005). A Ticklish Subject? Zizek and the Future of Left Radicalism. Thesis Eleven, 80, 94-107.
Robinson, A., & Tormey, S. (2006). Zizek Marx: Sublime Object or a Plague of Fantasies. Historical Materialism, 14(3), 145-174.
Sharpe, M. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1997). Ambigious Ideology and the Lacanian Twist. Journal for the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, 8-9, 117-130.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the political. London: Routledge.
Wright, E., & Wright, E. (Eds.). (1999). The Zizek Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991a). For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991b). Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (1994). The Spectre of Ideology. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Mapping Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1996). The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1998). Psychoanalysis in Post-Marxism: The Case of Alain Badiou. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. Verso: London.
Zizek, S. (2001). What can Lenin Tell Us about Freedom Today? Rethinking Marxism, 13(2).
Zizek, S. (2002a). A Plea for Leninist Intolerance. Critical Inquiry, 28(2).
Zizek, S. (2002b). Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917. New York: Verson.
Zizek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (Ed.). (1992). Everything you ever wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock. London: Verso.
Zupancic, A. (2000). Ethics of the real : Kant, Lacan / Alenka Zupancic. London ; New York :: Verso,.
Zupancic, A. (2006). The Concrete Universal and What Comedy can tell us about it. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Lacan: The Silent Partners. London: Verso.


[i] I have not read a lot of Jameson’s work, but as I have noted in Section Seven, I intend to include him within the thesis as a reader of Lacan and Marx. Indeed, I expect Jameson to become a central influence.
[ii] It is worth noting that Freud also turned to socio-political analysis in his later work (Freud, 1922: 206; 1930, 1939)
[iii] Lacan remained committed to psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline and the usage of psychoanalysis beyond the clincial patient continues to be controversial. Debate continues around the translation of psychoanalytic terms and ethics, which remain orientated towards the individual and analytical practice, to social life (Bellamy, 1993; Browning, 1991; Homer, 1996).
[iv] Lacan himself was divided on this point. He recognised, following Aristotle, that there are two definitions of revolution; the overthrow of the existing and a continual rotation around a central axis. This later definition is particularly pertinent for psychoanalytic theory as it illustrates how the appearance of change – the rotation of the wheel – can actually be a fundamental stability constituted around a disavowed exclusion.
[v] Žižek writes strongly against the discipline of desconstruction and its post-structuralist roots because of its ignorance of the stability caused by the Lacanian Real. Nonetheless, I have used to term here to signify Žižek’s political practice, which although different in method, has much the same aim as Derridian deconstruction.
[vi] Following Yannis Stavrakakis’ (Stavrakakis, 1999: 71) work on Lacanian political theory, I make a distinction here between politics – the administration of society within a pre-established framework of understanding – and the political, which constitutes the production of that framework. Whilst Žižek’s form of political philosophy may never construct strong positions in terms of the positiving horizons of administrative politics, it is able to enter the realm of the political and perform critiques of both those horizons and the economies of enjoyment at work within them.
[vii] This dialogue is best illustrated in the three-way debate between Laclau, Žižek and Judith Butler in the text Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (J. Butler, Laclau, & Zizek, 2000).
[viii] In this past year I have acted as a (co) guest editor for a graduate edition of this journal. The edition is due to be published early this year and contains two pieces of my work (see Section Eight)
[ix] The Real is one of three ‘orders’ that Lacan used to represent the structure of the psyche, the other two being the symbolic – the ‘discourse of the Other’ structured by the production of signifiers – and the imaginary – the identification with various images and signifiers in the name of an illusionary wholeness.
[x] Elsewhere Zizek has described this method as ‘ideological critique’. For the sake of clarity, in this document I will stick with short-circuit
[xi] My inital investigations have come to suggest that capitalism may be an empty signifier in the sense adopted by Laclau. That is, it structures a discourse, in this case, that of the economy without taking on a settled meaning. Thus capitalism becomes the site for political battles. However, I would like to argue, although this has not been formalised, that capitalism forms something of an empty signfying system. An emptying signfying system has a reproducable formalic system, something akin to the operation of language in the unconscious (Fink, 1995: 14-21)
[xii] Several interesting points occur from this analysis. These points will be explored further in Section Five.
[xiii] Although it worth noting that now that sweatshop labour is nonexistent within western economies, it is largely off the conceptual radar. When it is invoked, it is under the discourse of human rights, rather than as a point of economics, as if with a few adjustments ‘justice’ would be achieved. This example, I believe, asserts the necessity of the rehabilitation of the Marxist critique of political economy.
[xiv] There is a certain interchangability between these terms. As I shall expand on in Section Two, for Žižek the concrete universal is the necessary exclusion from an ideology. The concrete universal, however, is unable to be translated into the terms of the dominant ideology. Instead it appears as a gap, a hestitation within the ideological order. Thus, the concrete universal is not the Real, but it has a Real affect.
[xv] At this stage, perhaps the most difficult element of this question has been the framing of the question. Essentially, in this section I wish to investigate the possibilities for action against capitalism, assuming that the object to which I refer to as ‘capitalism’ needs to be replaced. As I get further into the literature I believe that the framing of this question should get easier.
[xvi] Indeed, in terms of action against capitalism from a psychoanalytic perspective, the literature is particularly light. Much of it consists of Žižek’s work on capitalism and his critics responses. That said, there is obviously a rich line of thought on political economy and anti-capitalism against which I will engage.
[xvii] I have to confess that the ethics of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis is an area in which I am weak. I have an understanding of the contours of the debate, but I do not understand the specifics. I look forward to expanding my knowledge in this area when I reach this section of the thesis.
[xviii] Sharpe’s text is an interesting one that I will seek to engage with in greater detail at a later date. Although I do not agree with many of Sharpe’s conclusions, in particular that Žižek is a Kantian (a strangely powerful insult in the world of psychoanalytic theory), the questions which drive his research, in particular Žižek’s conceptualisation of capitalism and his use of Marxist theory are very similar to mine. This similarity and discrepancy mean that I will have to entertain a detailed analysis of Sharpe’s work on Žižek.
[xix] ‘Disco-Marxism’ refers to the relatively recent combination of discourse theory and post-Marxism.
[xx] The status of a literature review in a theoretical-discursive thesis such as this is rather ambivalent. To some extent the whole thesis is a literature review in the sense that it is working with the knowledge of past theorists. On the other hand, a theoretical thesis avoids the descriptive nature of a literature review; while it may cover much of the same historical ground, the critical nature of a theoretical thesis means that a traditional ‘literature review’ is avoided.