Disavowed Foundations

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2009-06-23T20:33:00.002+12:00

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Chapter One Outline: The Negativity of the Left

2009-06-17T13:38:00.001+12:00

Despite the increasingly apparent contradictions of global capitalism – most notably in the current financial crisis and the interactions between ecological degradation, scarcity of resources and the continued expansion of life threatening poverty – the political Left appears to have no response. If ‘What is to be done?’ was the proto-typical Leftist question, at least for those able to bear the presence of Lenin, today those who cannot have been reduced to asking, ‘How can we help?’

The Left appears to have no response to the contradictions of capitalist political economy primarily because it has lost sight of either political economy or the economy in general. The Left has been split, in terms of academia, politics and ideology, between either an apolitical economy in which the reform of administrative devices are assumed to be neutral, or a withdrawal into (postmodern) politics or cultural studies without economy. It is as if neither politics or economy can be held together at the same time; an impossible element – class struggle – prevents their fusion. In essence, capitalism and class struggle has ceased to exist for both the Left and the Right, a circumstance with which the latter appears quite content. For Radical Leftist politics to regain its strength and begin to engage with the economy, capitalism must again return to the forefront of analysis.

Against the current splitting of the Left, in this thesis I shall argue that Slavoj Zizek operates at a particular symptomatic point within Leftist discourse. Zizek embodies the impossibilities of Leftist politics because, whilst he work grapples with the same difficulties of representation that have brought the downfall of traditional Leftist essentialist (read Marxist) politics, he maintains that the Left must not abandon the political terrain either through a tragic resignation to the dilemmas of representation or by losing sight of the politics of economy, which he labels class struggle. Indeed, Zizek has come to embody the very point of class struggle, insisting on the instantiation of the impossibility of political economy.

Yet, Zizek appears both unable and unwilling to posit an alternative imaginary. Instead he argues that the status of capitalism is such that any alternative or radical action has already been accounted for by the system; in these times it is neither possible to produce revolutionary activity, nor conceive of alternative imaginaries. Because of this interpretation of capital – along with the constitutive inability of psychoanalytic theory to produce a discourse of the good – Zizek’s work has become the point of much academic and political frustration. As he himself would argue, as a symptom, the signifier ‘Zizek’ has become a point of enjoyment. Yet, it is the wager of this thesis that despite the apparent impossibilities of Lacanian politics and Zizek’s interpretation of capitalism, it is Zizek’s work that provides the most hope for the hungry.

We must ask, therefore, If Zizek ‘s work embodies a singular point of radicality against global capital, what kind of political practices stem from his work? Moreover, first we must consider the kind of theory which has led to Zizek holding this position.

On Jameson , utopia and the practice of concrete universality

2009-06-12T15:01:00.004+12:00

Always Historcize!

So starts one of Jameson’s most influential texts, The Political Unconscious (1981), which, like much of Jameson’s work, is highly influenced by Adorno, along with Althusser and Freud. For Jameson there is nothing which is not historical, even if Marxism is the one discourse which unities them. Jameson definition of history, however, is vitally different from that generally posited (Homer, 2006: 56). Instead, for Jameson History can be correlated with the Real, an idea predominately developed in The Political Unconscious.

This text holds to two propositions that are highly influential for our consideration of utopianism. Firstly, the political is unconscious; the activity of everyday language and politics is determined by the absent presence of an unconscious subtext that Jameson labels History. Secondly, that the unconscious itself is political. Opposed to Freud’s individualistic reading of the unconscious, like Lacan Jameson reads the unconscious as the fundamental domain of intersubjectivity. The unconscious is social not in terms of the Jungian collective unconscious, but rather what Walter Benjamin deemed the ‘nightmare of history’ (Homer, 2006:48). Not only is the unconscious structured like a language (in terms of its grammatical logic) but also structured by language and the flows of History (Clark, 1984: 67). Thus history is not so much the context for the performance of the political, but rather a subtext; each text is a re-writing of the contradictions of history itself. The text brings into being the subtext to which it has itself been a reaction (Jameson, 1977:82).

Jameson considers History to be the highest level of abstraction in his meta-commentary of interpretation. History, for Jameson, can be considered analogous to the Real (Jameson, 1977). History is that which resists symbolisation absolutely, providing a limit to the symbolic, a limit which can only be felt in its affect upon the symbolic itself. Jameson’s conflation of the Real with his notion of History is the over-riding difference between himself and Zizek in regards to their respective understanding of utopia.

In The Political Unconscious, Jameson considers an Althusserian reading of the Real, and by association, History. Here the Real appears only as an absent cause, felt in its affects rather than positive presence. Moreover, Jameson goes on to contend that the Real is the absent cause of History, thus associating both History and the Real with the unconscious, or repression. As I shall develop further latter in this chapter, this reading of the Real and the unconscious has major implications for the difference between Jameson and Zizek’s reading of utopianism and the political practice of utopia.

The other two levels in his consideration of interpretation are the political and the social. The political, instantiated in the individual text, or the practice of language itself, is the level of the ‘imaginary resolution of a real contradiction’ (Jameson, 1977: 77). Between the contradictions of History and the imaginary resolution inherent in the political text is the social, which for Jameson situates the narrative of the socially symbolic act in terms of class discourse. For Jameson class is considered a purely relational concept, the second of three levels of abstraction in analysis. Jameson considers class – in line with his designation of the social as the realm of class discourse – as a relational concept, not a category but rather a historical experience of consciousness. Nonetheless, Jameson certainly does not reject the logic Zizek presents in the operation of class struggle. Instead, Jameson postulates that a remarkably similar operation occurs in the dialectic of history. Jameson (1977:102) states;

“History is what hurts, it is what refuses desire and sets inexorable limits to individual as well as collective praxis...But this history can be apprehended only through its effects, and never directly as some reified force. This is indeed the ultimate sense in which History as ground and untranscendable horizon needs no particular theoretical justification: we may be sure that its alienating necessities will not forget us, however much we might prefer to ignore them”

Similarly, in regards to class, Zizek argues;

“...class struggle as antagonism is, as it were, its own obstacle, that which forever prevents its own direct expression, its translation into clear symbolic or positive terms...the wager of Marxism is that there is one antagonism (‘class struggle’) which overdetermines all the others and which is, as such, the concrete universal of the entire field” (Zizek, 2004b: 100-101).

The structural role of History, for Jameson is the same as Class struggle for Zizek. Both set a limit to signification, a limit which is only presented by the experience of its absence. Class struggle and History are the negative limit of all discourse and as such cannot be the subject of investigation themselves. Nor, however, are they strictly determinate in a mode similar to the Marxist base/superstructure model. Both Jameson and Zizek would argue that such a model is impossible – there is no deterministic base which acts as a positive guarantee for political life. Neither does Althusser’s notion of (economic) determination in the last instance apply, although the dialectics are similar. Instead, for both Jameson and Zizek determination by the presence of absence allows a complex dialectical interaction between what might be deemed the ‘base’ (absence) and reactions to that base. These reactions are relatively autonomous, but are nonetheless reactions to the impossibility posed by History or Class struggle. Notably, both Zizek (in Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, Please! (2000a)) and Jameson (Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism) (1991)) have argued that postmodernism is not a positive discourse in itself (if a postmodern discourse can be regarded as positive) but rather the latest discursive response to the impossibility inherent in capitalism.

In this way, Jameson extends the use of Lacanian psychoanalysis as a sociological project. By considering the operation of history as a form of political unconscious, Jameson is able to consider the formation of desire and contradiction as specifically Marxist formations. For Jameson, contradictions operates in the same manner is desire in Lacan’s work, a designation which allows Jameson to bisect the traditional difficulty within Marxism of mediating between the social and the personal. Desire, as defined by history is immediately both personal and socially defined (Clark, 1984:68). Moreover, desire can be considered as contradiction and as a corollary, just as the Real is what resists, yet constitutes, desire, so does History.

History is conceived as a mode of production, but not in a strictly economic sense. Similar to class, Jameson considers the mode of production to be a differential concept; any given mode of production must relate to both previous modes of production, which may still have a presence, and anticipate future modes of production, specifically the collective dialectic of socialism. Following Raymond Williams, Jameson considers capitalism to be the dominant mode of production, but residual forms of production still exist, along with evidence of future modes (Homer, 2006:42).

Today, the dialectic of history has largely stalled around the capitalist mode of production, subsuming residual modes of production and limiting the possibilities for the emergence of future modes, or at least warping and displacing the utopian demand that drives the development of alternative modes. Here form becomes content as the processes inherent in the capitalist mode of production become sedimented in their own right (Homer, 2006:47). Much of the politics of Jameson’s work centres around the openly of the dialectic of the history to future (socialist) possibilities. The process of opening up the dialectic, when antagonistic forces previously held back by imaginary resolutions become openly contradictory, is known as cultural revolution.

Thus, not only is the unconscious structured like a language, but for Jameson the political unconscious is structured like the historic mode of production. In this way, not only ideology but individual desire is structured by the mode of production. Under global capitalism, Jameson argues that desire and subjectivity have become overtly reified, resulting in a commodity fetishism that has stalled the advancement of the collective dialectic of history.

Nonetheless, within this dialectic, the collective urge continues and is expressed not only in utopianism, but in ideology. For Jameson, therefore a utopian demand is always present within even the most reactionary forms of ideology. We can read this demand as jouissance. Although ideology works to prevent the impact of historical contradictions upon the subject, ideology is not primarily a mode of repression. Rather the subject is compensated for their passivity in the face of apparent contradiction. This compensatory gratification can be read as the element of utopia or jouissance inherent in every ideological formation. Here the utopian demand is ultimately for the fullness of society, that, contra Laclau, society does exist.
Consequently, for Jameson, all forms of class consciousness have a utopian demand in the attempt at an imaginary resolution of real contradiction, even if this imaginary resolution comes through the exclusion of other forms of class consciousness (Jameson, 1981: 289-291). The utopian dimension comes in the form the coherence and unity of a discourse of collectivity. Even today, the neo-liberal practice of class consciousness can be considered to feature a degree of utopianism simply through the presumption of a classless society which expresses collective solidarity.
Utopianism, therefore, has no relation to any specific content; one cannot designate the identity of utopia, nor construct a society that would fulfil any requirements that have been construction. Rather, utopianism is a practice, a method or a movement in which the desire for being itself is instantiated. As Jameson states; ‘Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is indistinguishable from its reality, whose ontology coincides with its representation’. (2004:35). As Buchanan (2007:19) notes, our understanding of utopia can only be tautological; any answer to the question ‘What is utopia?’ is necessarily erroneous unless the answer is utopia itself. It is this indescribable mysteriousness of utopia which leads to science fiction and the literary genre as a whole to be the primary mode of utopian expression. Here our inability to imagine the future organises utopian images around an impossible vanishing point (Jameson, 1998: 74)

The question of utopia, therefore, is not what it is but rather how it works. Utopianism then can only be designated as a transcendental absence, the affect of which we can fits under the signifier utopia. In this sense utopianism, or at least the form of utopianism which Jameson advocates, bears an overwhelming resemblance to Lacan’s understanding of drive. As Jameson states;“... in which the structure of Utopian wish-fulfilment itself slowly swung about into its object, form therefore becoming content and transforming the Utopian wish into a wish to which in the first place” (2005:213)

Moreover, Utopianism cannot come from ‘nowhere’ but instead from the ideological positions and class consciousness available within the contemporary conditions of possibility. Jameson’s sense of utopia includes this positioned impulse or urge for being, but also the impossibility of such a position. In this sense utopianism keeps alive the possibility of a different world, but takes the form of a ‘stubborn negation of all that is’ (Jameson, 1971: 111)

The impossibility of utopia does not relate to the practical impossibilities of political life, but rather the limitations of our imaginations. Imagination, of course, is not limited to the fancy of the individual. Rather, as Jameson himself has developed, imagination is always a social creation. The unconscious is always political, the unconscious is structured like a language and informed by language which itself is shaped by ideology. Thus the limitations of our imagination is always a political limit, it is the limit of what exists within the political order. Existence is not indexed to material presence, but rather ideological recognition. In this sense, as Buchanan (1998: 18) notes, utopia is what is repressed and is felt most in points of censorship and anxiety within the text.

Thus what the utopian text invokes is our constitutive inability to imagine utopia itself (Jameson, 1982: 153). In this sense, utopia appears only as an absence and any attempt to name this absence produces an ideological closure which converts the utopian demand for an anticipatory appeal to reactionary state. Although Jameson’s position evokes connotations of Zizek’s distinction between activity and the Act, the understanding of the presence of absence in relation to utopia is the key distinction between the work of Jameson and Zizek. Both authors contend that utopia occurs at the edge of our understanding. The value of Jameson is that he conceives the utopian impulse in everyday practice. The vital difference is that whilst Jameson believes that these limits come into being through the effects of absence, Zizek’s fuller conception of the Real and universality allows for the specific identification of the limitations of discourse, even though they remain incommensurable and extimate from the dominant horizon of being.

Thus, for Jameson, utopia is at its most effective when it cannot be imagined;
“Its function lies not in helping us to imagine a better future but rather in demonstrating our utter incapacity to imagine such a future – our imprisonment in a non-utopian present without historicity of futurity – so as to reveal the ideological closure of the system in which we are somehow trapped and confined” (2004: 46).

Utopia then suggests a complete overhaul of society, one that will produce much anxiety and repression of the utopian imagination (Jameson, 1998: 75). Although this anxiety can cause us to continue to grasp to the illusions which coherence our sense of being and hold us to the limitations of our current order, anxiety itself presents an energy from which to move forward (ibid: 51-53).

Whilst this form of utopianism leads itself to acquisitions of negativity, positive forms are easily subverted. Jameson argues that the designation of specific points of protest is contrary to the effectiveness of utopianism. When the specific contradictions become apparent, the tendency is to focus political demands upon these points. At this point, however, the utopian imagination becomes limited and what might have been a revolutionary demand gives way to practical political programmes (2004: 45). A salient example of this process in these times is the Green movement. Although Green ideology at times suggests an energy for widespread change that might be considered utopian, it has become too easy to divert this enthusiasm into smaller scale processes that only serve to supplement the interests of capital and escalate ecological collapse.

In this manner, Jameson’s conception of utopianism has vital similarities with Zizek’s. Zizek has often argued that politics in our time has lost its radical edge, what Jameson calls utopianism and Zizek references to the Lacanian act, and has settled for mere activity. Nonetheless, Zizek’s form of utopianism – the communist hypothesis – takes its form from the expression of actually occurring antagonisms with capitalism. Whilst he acknowledges that capital is able to include and pacify most of its symptoms, he designates the excluded or hungry populations of the world as the specific contradiction which holds a vital, utopian status. It is this designation which marks the differentiation between Jameson and Zizek’s conception of utopia, a difference which is driven by their opposing readings of the Real and the concept of universality.

Jameson considers that the notions of concept, system, universality, totality and history can be conflated (1990: 46). In doing so, his construction of the Real follows Althusser’s ‘absent cause’ as well as Adorno’s understanding of the concept. Here the concrete is concrete because - rather than being associated with discrete/empirical facts - it is the synthesis of several particular determinants such that ‘The totality could be concrete precisely because it included all of the mediations that linked the seemingly isolated facts” (Jay, 1984: 104-5). Here the Real, or the other/concrete side of the concept, is felt only in its effects and the ideological censorship that occurs around those effects. This understanding is more indebted to the Freudian unconscious than any Lacanian notion of the Real Jameson has tended to equate the notion of totality with the Althusserian notion of absent cause; totality is not available to representation - the totality can only be represented through its absence (Homer, 2006: 158).

As well as Althusser, Jameson takes his understanding of the concept from Adorno, whom he credits with a reading of the universal and particular that no other Marxist theorist has been able to achieve (Jameson, 1990: 9). That is, to be able to maintain the concept of totality and concept itself, whilst being able to consider the ‘dark side’ of the concept. For Jameson the originality of Jameson’s work stems from this ability to think;

‘an outside, or external face of the concept, which, like that of the moon, can never be visible or accessible to us: but we must vigilantly remember and reckon that other face into our sense of the concept whilst remaining within it in the old way and continuing to use and think it’ (ibid:25).

Moreover, Jameson suggests that to think this otherside is to reference the unconscious as a way to ‘endow the thinking mind with a dimension of radical otherness that...must structurally elude us, and remain forever out of reach’. It is here that the notion of totality comes in being, allowing the concept to be retained and without being reified, freeing us from the ‘spell’ of the concept to which there is nonetheless a drive (ibid: 26). Adorno, for Jameson, allows us to hold onto a belief in the concept whilst decoupling it from the thing itself of which the concept is simply an abstract representation. This representation must necessarily fail – hence the ‘dark side’ of the concept – but the notion of the concept can be maintained.

For Jameson, the importance of the struggle over the epistemological validity of totality is the maintenance of the dimension of utopia; the possibility of radically transforming society. Thus, in turning its back on the concept of totality, for Jameson, postmodernism is rejecting any prospect of the radical transformation of capitalism and is thus a rejection of Marxism's emancipatory narrative. This is the problem of post-structuralist/negative ontological politics; it leads only to an endorsement of the status quo. Thus Jameson's demand to maintain some aspect of utopian transformation politics (Homer, 2006:178).

Whilst Jameson would no doubt reject this label, conversely, he provides a similar political step in his understanding of the mode of production and collectivity of the dialectic.). Cognitive mapping invokes a utopian imperative to derive a future configuration out of the failure of the present (Jameson, 1998: 74)What is different is the explicit labelling of such positions.

Yet both Jameson and Zizek – the former with more conviction that the latter – suggest that political visions must be developed. In response to Stavrakakis’s development of the possibilities of partial/feminine enjoyment and radical democracy, Zizek suggests that what is to be done is not the formation of new, alternative mode of being, but the consideration of political passion in its own terms, suggesting ‘the true question is: What is there to be passionate about? Which political choices fit people’s experiences as “realistic” and “feasible” (Zizek, 2008: 331).

Likewise, Jameson argues that the role of Marxism cannot be limited to ‘scientific’ analysis. Rather the question is whether Marxism can be used to develop ideological positions and present a vision for the future, certainly in his earlier work. In The Political Unconscious, (1981: 285-286) , Jameson argues that despite the tradition of the negative dialectic in Marxism, Marxism remains capable of producing a ‘positive hermeneutic’, as evidenced by, amongst others, Bloch’s work on hope and utopia. Furthermore, Jameson adds;

“a Marxist negative hermeneutic, a Marxist practice of ideological analysis proper, must in the practical work of reading and interpretation be exercised simultaneously with a Marxist positive hermeneutic, or a decipherment of the Utopian impulses of these same still ideological texts...in which a functional method for describing cultural texts is articulated with an anticipatory one” (ibid: 296, emphasis in original).

Thus, the key point to be taken from Jameson work in regards to the positioning of a utopian response to capitalism is that there is a utopian demand inherent in every ideological text. Thus whilst ideological analysis must focus on the interpretation of the modes of enjoyment inherent in any discursive position, critique cannot remain negative, but must rather identify those positive elements that embody the utopian impulse that would allow the text to advance past its own limitations.
The task of Marxism, in other words, is to reinvent its own Utopian impulse (Homer, 2006:94). It is perhaps for this reason that Jameson designates Marxism – to which the development of ideological positions is constitutive of its approach – rather than psychoanalysis as the ultimate form of historicism. It is appears that the explicit labelling of the content of this vision is a matter more of theory and political strategy than a structured political philosophy.

But for Jameson the failure of the concept is present only as absence. Here he conflates the totality, the Real (and by association) and the unconscious with the notion of universality. By contrast, Zizek’s (previously outlined) understanding of both the Real and of universality suggests that there is more to the impossibility of objectivity than absence. Although the ‘dark side of the moon’ is only felt through its absence in the hegemonic signifying field, it nonetheless exists. Moreover, it is not so much that the dark side exists, but in the words of Pink Floyd lyrist Roger Waters, ‘There is no dark side of the moon really. matter of fact it’s all dark’. That is, it is outside of the concept is not strictly absent, but rather takes its presence as one of the particulars within the totality of universality. Zizek, in his Lacanian reading of Lacan, considers the existence of this particular to be the concrete universal.

Significantly, Jameson argues that whilst Adorno and Zizek are great dialecticians, Adorno’s tone can be considered tragic whereas Zizek (and we can compare him to Eagleton in this regard) follows a more comedic logic. It is this comedic logic which gives Zizek’s work the greater political traction (2006: 7).

Nonetheless, this traction is not immediately apparent in some versions of his work. Perhaps the most controversial element of Zizek’s oeuvre (along with the associated subtractive politics) is his notion of the Lacanian Act. Here the Act occurs as a sudden break from the existing, a moment (or suspension) of time in which the impossible occurs. This point has entertained numerous points of critiqued, predominately aimed at the supposedly conservative implications of Zizek’s work in his dismissal of mere activity in favour of the radical implications of the Act (cf. Devenney, 2007; Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2005). It is, however, the Act which is implied in much of Zizek’s use of utopia in which utopia is instantiated in the occurrence of impossibility, an unnameable compulsion for otherness (Brockelmann, 1996:201).

Nonetheless, another tradition exists within Zizek’s work that – whilst responding to the same impossibility of action – allows for a fuller application of utopianism. This position – the practice of concrete universality – is not far divorced from the Act and may indeed be considered to subsume the practice (ibid: 202). Moreover, this position, is not the singular truth of his work, the foundations of essence between mere appearance or the culmination of his project but rather what I want to suggest is the form of politics which holds the most potential for politics today and the hungry of tomorrow. This position has been best considered in the Parallax View.
Through the notion of the parallax, Zizek suggests that we can ‘practice’ the concrete universal by ‘confronting a[n] [abstract] universality with its ‘unbearable’ example’ (Zizek, 2006: 13). This unbearable example is, of course, the concrete universal. The concrete universal has an existence, although it is not a positive one within the hegemonic domain of abstract universality. Rather, it appears as the Real; a gap within the order of being. Nonetheless, by taking a parallax view the presence of this excluded exception becomes clear. What is important about the parallax view is not the positive existence of the exception. The exception does ‘exist’ within the ideological form of the abstract universal in a more palpable form. Poverty, for example, does exist within the ideological formations that support capitalism. Indeed its re-presented presence is often excessive, taking the forms of meaningless statistics and images over-ridden with super-ego guilt. What makes poverty – the hungry – into the concrete universal or constitutive exception is the relationship between the hungry and capitalist ideology. The hungry are ontologically excluded not because their presence cannot be acknowledged, but rather because they cannot be acknowledged as an intimate (or rather, extimate) part of universality itself.

In this sense the concrete universal has an extimate existence, outside of but produced by the abstract universal. Thus whilst concrete universality may be felt as an absence within the normative experience of capitalism, a presence does exist. As Zizek states;

“Lacan’s final lesson is not relativity and plurality of truths but the hard, traumatic fact that in every concrete constellation truth is bound to emerge in some contingent detail. In other words, although truth is context-dependent – although there is no truth in general, but always the truth of some situation – there is none the less in every plural field a particular point which articulates the truth and as such cannot be relativised; in this precise sense, truth is always One” (Zizek, 1991: 196, original emphasis)

This is a point that, we can speculate, Jameson would not reject out of hand. Rather he would suggest that the truth does emerge not as truth itself but as an affect within the symbolic order. The vital point of difference between Jameson and Zizek is that the latter contends that this truth becomes embodied in a particular point. We can, as I have throughout this thesis, label this point within capitalism as the hungry; the excluded or reserve army of labour whose suffering is constitute of the totality of capitalism. Moreover, there are deep political consequences for the presence of the concrete universal, and not just upon the bodies of those who have this status.

The presence of the concrete universal adds new leverage to the political practice of the utopian impossibility. In terms of Jameson’s reading of totality, the utopian point of impossibility emerges at the limit point of the discourse, what Jameson regards as History and Zizek class struggle. This position, however, lends itself only to a patient politics of rejecting the forms of censorship that emerge around the presence of absent and engaging in what Zizek has come to label ‘subtractive politics’. In his recent work on utopia, however, Jameson’s writing strategy has become quasi-transcendentalist (resonating with Derrida methinks). It thereby becomes quite different from subtractive politics. (By practicing the concrete universal, one is able to force this point of absence into being, not in terms of the full inclusion of the exception into the abstract universal, such that universality becomes fully constituted, but rather the violent intrusion of the disavowed foundations of the order itself. In this manner a new narrative can be created, which, if for only a historical moment, means that cause is no longer absent and utopian change is forced into our imagination.

The concrete presence – and identification – of an excluded point of exception which signals the existence of a totality is the key difference between Zizek and Jameson in regards to the hungry. This difference is embodied by their respective stances towards philosophy. Zizek openly regards himself as a philosopher. He rejects the image of the ‘crazy’ meta-philosopher, attempting to find an answer to everything, but rather contends that the role of the philosopher is to reshape the way in which we understand questions. For this reasons, despite his critics and his own statements about the need for an alternative vision, Zizek simply does not see this as his task.

By contrast, Jameson is an avowed anti-philosophy because of the connotations of systematisation, reification and ultimately commodification. Jameson’s nightmare is that his work could be packaged up into a system and sold off as a ‘brand name’ theorist. In this regard, Jameson reads Zizek’s Parallax View as a failed attempt at anti-philosophy. He states;

“Clearly the parallax position is an anti-philosophical one, for it not only eludes philosophical systemisation, but takes as its central thesis the latter’s impossibility. What we have here is theory rather than philosophy...yet theory itself was always ‘grounded’ on a fundamental (and insoluble) dilemma: namely, that the provisional terms in which it does its work inevitably over time get thematised (to use Paul de Man’s expression); they get reified (and even commodified, if I may say so) and even turn into systems in their own right”

Moreover, Jameson continues;

“ My occasional fear is, then, that by theorising and conceptualising the impossibilities designated by the parallax view, Zizek may turn out to have produced a new concept and a new theory after all, simply by naming what it is better not to call the unnameable” (2006: 8).

What Jameson misses, however, is that Zizek is a philosopher, he does produce a system and a concept, but a concept of what does not exist. Zizek is a philosopher of the Real and for that reason his philosophy – a grand philosophy of that which does not exist – will always strike a comedic tone. Fundamentally, whilst Jameson argues that the universal does not exist, but we can feel the presence of this absence in its effects upon the symbolic order in which our bodies exist, Zizek contends that it is the very non-existence of the universal which gives it is presence. If the original illusion of universality is that society is present, then for Zizek there is always a perverted truth in appearance; society has its existence, but only by the exclusion of ‘non-society’, which although banished from our horizon of understanding, nonetheless is an embodied exclusion. This embodied exclusion, which, in capitalism can be identified as the hungry or homo sacer, is the concrete universal, the part with no part which is the key to both the operation of universality and the impossibility of class struggle within capitalism.

If, however, the perverse signification of the concrete universal can advance the impossible performance of utopianism, then the naming of this horizon itself is a different matter. Both Jameson and Zizek take some measure to suggest that this future will take a communist or at least collective form, but are unwilling to advance further positive co-ordinates. Zizek labels this possibility the ‘communist hypothesis’. Zizek identifies this position follows Badiou, how has argued that without the idea of communism, there is no reason to do either philosophy, or attempt any form of collective action. Moreover, he argues that the communist hypothesis does not necessarily have any particular reference to its earlier instantiation; rather, the task today is to find a ‘new modality of existence of the hypothesis to come into being’ (Badiou, 2008: 115).

Zizek (2009) repeats Badiou’s argument without contention, adding that one should not consider the hypothesis as a ‘regulative idea’ of the kind that might lead to an ethical socialism with an a priori norm (see Zizek’s previous debate with Geoff Boucher (Boucher, 2004; Zizek, 2004a)). Rather the communist hypothesis must be referenced to actual contradictions within capitalism.

As Zizek states;

“To treat communism as an eternal Idea implies that the situation which generates it is no less eternal, that the antagonism to which communism reacts will always be here. From which it is only one step to a deconstructive reading of communism as a dream of presence, of abolishing all alienating representation; a dream which thrives on its own impossibility” (Zizek, 2009)

Not only does this continue Zizek’s long-standing dismissal of deconstruction and Derrida, but Jameson’s understanding of the impossibility of utopia (as the impossibility of our imaginations, indexed against a collectivist dialectic) is also in the firing line. Instead, Zizek argues that we use the communist hypothesis against the presence of contradictions of capitalism. It appears that for Zizek the only radical usage of the utopian urge is in this communist demand against the contradictions of capitalism. A utopian demand certainly exists within liberal attempts to reform the symptoms of capital (Sachs and the United Nations being the primary example of this approach) or the conservatism of the Bush Administration and its institutional cronies, whose more implicit demand is that society does indeed exist; it is simply threaten by enemies which it cannot recognise as having created. In the face of these alternatives, Fukuyama was certainly correct; history has come to an end.

Thus Zizek’s answer to Brockelmann (1996: 205) question ‘What, after all does it mean to be ‘against’ capitalism it that suggests nothing about what one would change in it or substitute for it?’ or Laclau’s almost hysterical demands for Zizek to reveal his alternative form of economy or radical imaginary (Laclau, 2000), is not the production of an alternative horizon, but rather the identification of point which reveal why the current horizon cannot continue. For Zizek, this is the most appropriate form of politics for the limitations of our time.

Thus the only way to restore the dialectic of history is by reference to the communist hypothesis, a hypothesis which itself can only come into being against a horizon of the contradictions of capital. Perhaps more accurately, although the presence of the communist hypothesis is necessary to generate a utopian demand, it is not the communism itself which will provoke change, but whether capitalism is able to contain its own contradictions. The task of this thesis, and any form of politics which attempts to invoke such a hypothesis, is to practice a form of analysis which exposes the constitutive contradictions of global capitalism.
Zizek argues that these contradictions are embodied in four antagonisms which threaten capitalism; the possibility of ecological collapse, the contradictions between immaterial labour, intellectual property and private property, the development of new scientific technologies which are changing the nature of life in its barest form and the new forms of exclusion, which Zizek labels new forms of apartheid. This exclusion is most notable in the rapidly expanding slums of the third world, but increasingly an underclass is developing within the western world itself. This group acts as reserve or surplus labour, the existence of which maintains the status of labour as a commodity and the capitalistic class relations. The radical potential of this group is not their poverty as such – horrific as it is – but rather the walls and divisions used to exclude them from the rest of society.
Under Zizek’s construction of the four dominant symptoms of capitalism, there is one symptom that defines the group; poverty, or rather the exclusion of those in poverty. The other three contradictions have been able to be included within the limits of capitalism. Environmentalism, despite the apparent radical possibility of a chaotic breech of nature, has become sustainable development. The contradictions of private property have become a legal challenge and bio-genetics has developed into an ethical, or even scientific, struggle. For Zizek these three elements are part of the battle for the commons.

Here Zizek follows Hardt and Negri in suggesting that the commons – particularly in the postmodern articulation of the commons in immaterial labour and knowledge – are increasingly being enclosed and privatised. In relation to these specific antagonisms, environmentalism equates to the commons of external nature, intellectual property to the commons of culture and bio-technology to the commons of internal nature. Whilst this enclosure and exploitation of what is common to all evokes the necessary use of communism, it is only the fourth symptom, that of exclusion, which adds the dimension of universality and the consequent possibility of communist ‘democracy’. Zizek adds that this level of universality – the Hegelian identification of totality embodied in the concrete subject which provides the impetus for political action – was the “communist dream of the young Marx – to bring together the universality of philosophy and the universality of the proletariat”. Thus, it is these contradictions, rather than any sense of a radical imaginary, which open up the prospect of before utopian demands and make democracy possible (Brockelmann, 1996: 199).

For Zizek, universality and democracy are intimately intertwined, abet with a characteristic twist. The excluded stand for universality preciously because they are excluded; they are the part with no part, the element whose exclusion constitutes the order. That is, the capitalist empire – both as an ideological system and symbolic/Real logic – must produce an exclusion in order to constitute itself as a set. That exclusion, of the unruly masses with no official place in the private capitalist order, is what makes the totality of Empire universal. The universal is not the failed attempt of any given set to constitute itself, but rather the set and its failure constitute the domain of universality.

Zizek links this form of universality to democracy in the Greek sense to signify the intrusion of the excluded into the socio-political space. Here Greek democracy contrasts strongly with Western-style liberal democracy. Liberal democracy seeks to include, but only that which is already symbolised within the current order. That is, liberal democracy is already formed on the basis of the exclusion of class struggle, the main instantiation of which is the masses of urban slums that act as the reserve army of labour for capitalism. By contrast, the Grecian form of democracy is based upon the inclusion of this group – the part with no part in the established order – into the demos. Such a move cannot be established by the demos themselves but rather must come from the internal destabilisation of the order. Thus democracy is universal in the sense that it includes that which is outside of itself, yet necessary for its own constitution.

Thus what is vital for both universality and democracy is not exclusion per se, but rather the interaction or gap between the excluded and the established order. The universal may be embodied by the excluded, but universality occurs through the inclusion of the excluded element. Zizek labels this approach a parallax view, where two incommensurable positions are held together. Thus, in Zizek’s communist democracy there is no specific revolutionary agent. Rather the revolutionary potential occurs in the short circuit between the order and its exclusion. The figure of the excluded confronts us – in its universal status – with the truth of its own position.

Thus, at this time in history in which capitalism reigns darkly supreme, yet is paradoxically plagued both by its own non-existence and the tormenting presence of symptoms which prove its existence, Zizek’s form of negative ontological politics is the approach which provides the most hope for the kind of radical change which would drastically improve the material circumstances of the hungry by giving them a presence beyond their mere biological being.

At this time, the opportunity exists within through a utopian demand for the impossible; for the democratic intrusion of the surplus labour of the world which has thus far operated as a necessary shadow of our order. This movement will not occur, however, only via the kind of hope that occurs when a utopian demand is disengaged from the processes of capitalism. Rather, more than ever today we are provided with an opportunity to practice an active politics of the negative by the exposal of the disavowed foundations of our order. These foundations, otherwise known as the concrete universal, offer the prospect of a dynamic and unsustainable disturbance in civilisation through the forced affective acknowledgement of the excluded as the foundations of our mode of being. To practice the concrete universal is thus to cross the mode of fantasy that coheres the horizon of being present in our civilisation, leaving ideology with no defence against that which – if we have any sense of ourselves as a species ‘good animals’ – must become unpalatable. This is Zizek’s utopian impossibility; the practice of concrete universality such that we (as a people) are forced to imagine a new mode of being. This is utopia.

The utopia of the communist hypothesis holds no content, no vision for the future, only an acknowledgement that the future must be different. As Jameson (2004:36) states; “even if we succeed in reviving utopia itself, the outlines of a new and effective practical politics for the era of globalisation will at once become visible, but only that we will never come to one without it”. Thus, as Buchanan (1998) notes, the practice of generating a new world is a utopian urge, but there is nothing utopian about the resulting society, which will be, like any other instantiation of human community, profoundly complicated.

Moreover, inherent in the demands of both Jameson and Zizek, and indeed any form of politics which takes its orientation from a negative ontology is a minimal demand, most beautifully articulated by Adorno in his Moralita Minnima: ‘There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand; that no one should go hungry’

As for the content of this vision or hypothesis, Zizekian psychoanalysis provides neither answers nor guarantees for the future. Zizek, in his own words, ‘Has a hat, but does not have a rabbit’. Rather in these dark times of global capitalism when neither rabbits nor their rabid breeding are possible, Zizek has set his sights on the critique of the fetishtic Hamsters produced by others. Without the instantiation of the co-ordinates of class struggle and the operation of the concrete universal, we are forced to grasp the commodified Hamster’s provided by capitalism.

Thus, in terms of the shape of the future, Zizek provides no options other than to suggest we need a new one. Yet, because of the performance of the impossibility of utopia, his work is certainly not conservative. Instead, it relies upon the opening of the space of utopian. Only then can Jameson’s dialectic of collectivity, otherwise known as the communist hypothesis, flourish.

But what form will the future hold? There can be no guarantee, but politics will continue. Utopia – in the sense of the fullness of being and the arrival of jouissance – will not occur. Instead the future may well take the shape of one of the approaches critiqued in this text, a version of Laclau’s radical democracy (indeed, in How to Begin from the Beginning Zizek suggests that there is no longer a singular revolutionary agent, but rather emancipatory politics will come from a dynamic combination of different agents and antagonisms. Where Zizek differs from Laclau is the identification of the excluded as the base for these agents and antagonisms and our implication in the universality of this position), or Madra and Ozselcuk’s feminine class relationship, but Zizek provides no suggestion as to what that might be, nor should we demand it from him. Instead, what is required is that at this time in the history of humanity when global capitalism reigns darkly supreme, it is the utopian practice of Zizekian psychoanalysis that is required. The rest is history.

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Thesis update, May 2009

2009-05-13T13:31:00.002+12:00

My thesis asks the question, ‘What is the political value of post-Lacanian psychoanalysis for the materially excluded populations of the world economy?’ I find that the value of Lacanian theory for the hungry is not in terms of the development of a political ideology, or alternative mode of being, but rather the identification of the hungry – in conjunction with a Marxian analysis of class struggle – as necessarily excluded from the global economy. Such an identification of this population as the group which must suffer for the continued functioning of capitalism, should intrude into our contemporary ideological sense coherence, producing what Zizek labels a ‘traversal of the fantasy’, whereby the subject is not beyond fantasy, but rather is allowed no respite from its symptom – in this case the hungry. In these circumstances the subject has no option but to alter its form of being; existing co-ordinates of understanding can no longer hold. The potential still exists, however, for a conservative narrative to develop whereby the horror of the hungry is allowed to remain commensurable economic ideology because of a cynical or fetishistic disavow of their circumstances, in particular by externalising this failure to another cause. Alternatively the ideological status of capitalism could simply be altered – there is no progress – but this would constitute a fundamental alteration of the modernist enlightenment doctrine. For Zizek, what subverts this conservative potential is the instantiation of a utopian impossibility, one that claims that the acceptance of a lacking cause is unacceptable. Zizek labels this utopian impossibility the communist hypothesis.

The starting (Marxist) wager is that capitalism is fundamentally unsustainable because of the emergence of a fundamental material contradiction. The capitalist mode of production revolves around constantly increasing levels of production, which can only occur whilst a level of inequality is maintained. As a result of this inequality, any increase in the standard of living of those at the bottom of the global ‘development ladder’ requires increases in the overall size of the economy. The rungs of the ladder very rarely change place, but wealth does dangle down. Although the reduction of poverty is not part of either the symbolic functioning of capitalism, or its ideological political supplements, increases in global economic production, combined with the predicted substantial increases in population growth, will mean that gross global economic production will soar in the foreseeable future. Yet it is economic growth itself which is causing the ecological degradation which currently plagues the planet. Thus neither a contraction of the global economy – which would only serve to further drive the hungry into poverty – nor or further expansion will serve to either slow down climate change or help the poorest subjects of the world.

This material contradiction – between the hungry and the climate – is a necessary symptom of the capitalist economy. Capitalism, despite the apparent ideological narrative, cannot resolve these symptoms within itself; moreover, the capitalist economic system creates this very antagonism. For this reason, attempts to resolve these symptoms within the logic of capitalism are doomed to fail. Consequently, in the first chapter (‘The material contradictions of capitalism’) I seek to describe – whilst maintaining a critical approach to the representation of empirical occurrences – both the material contradictions of capitalism and the failure of positiving approaches. In this category I include both the liberal-apologist discourse of Jeffery Sachs (who attempts to articulate a solution within capitalism) and the utopian positivism of Hardt and Negri who have sought to postulate an anti-capitalist utopian manifesto.

I will go on to contend that the initial struggle against capitalism emerges within the methodological terrain amongst which it is understood, a fight against the hegemonic logic of the positivist/scientific/empirical discourse which currently dominates politics. The first stage of analysis is to suggest that the material contradictions of the global economy are not solvable within its own terms. Instead we must turn to theory which avoids the reification or commodification of the symptoms of global economy. The discourse which appears the most productive for this task is post-Lacanian psychoanalysis, which has become an increasingly popular form of analysis in Leftist political discourse, despite the failure to constitute an accepted form of political ideology.

In my second chapter, I will consider the fundamental concept of post-Lacanian psychoanalysis, with primary emphasis upon the dialectic between lack and excess, the Real and jouissance through ideology, fantasy and objet a. The central difficulty in this chapter is the difficulty in defining ‘impossible’ Lacanian concepts. Nonetheless, there remains something ahistorical and structural about working with Lacanian theory, as Lacan himself expressed in his reversion to mathme’s and topological figures. Ultimately I can only argue that this is the reading that I will be using in this particular thesis. It will also be noted that these are largely Zizekian readings of Lacan. This is a crucial chapter because it sets up the key assumptions and limitations of the political approaches that follow.
Consequently, my third chapter explores the use of post-Lacanian psychoanalysis as a political device. Whilst the use of Lacanian theory has become more widespread, no stable fusion for its use has developed. This is not unexpected as psychoanalysis can be considered an impossible discourse; no ‘correct’ reading of Lacan is possible, nor it’s applicable to the political. As Stavrakakis suggests, the Lacanian Left ‘does not exist’. Thus in this brief chapter I will explore the history of the use of psychoanalysis in the political, including its Freudian beginning, and interactions with Marxism, as well as introducing the central contemporary debates over the use of psychoanalysis in politics. I will conclude by introducing the three central positions which have emerged, signified by the work of Laclau, Stavrakakis and Zizek.

The fourth chapter explores the work of Ernesto Laclau and follows his work through his move from radical democracy to populism, both in terms of the changes that have occurred in his theoretical work and how Laclau perceives politics in relation to the hungry. Laclau’s work (along with Chantal Mouffe) holds a seminal position with political psychoanalysis and I will take time to consider the critique of Laclau’s theory of hegemony and radical democracy in terms of his inadequate theory of enjoyment as well as the limitations of his political approach. Laclau’s work is both an ontological theory of what exists in the political work, but also a prescription of the type of politics that should be implemented in these conditions. The most salient limitation is Laclau’s rejection of class ‘essentialism’ and his associated refusal to consider the overarching framework of capitalism. This limitation can be linked not only to Laclau’s representation of the hungry in the political field, but also his interpretation of the Lacanian dialectic, firstly in terms of enjoyment, but most notably the Real. Thus, Laclau’s approach to the hungry is to include them within an overall ‘chain of equivalences’ of demands. Overall, I have sympathy for a version of Laclau’s interpretation of the political field, if not his political approach. I do not, however, believe it to be a plausible approach for the emancipation of the hungry in this environment.

The fifth chapter of the thesis moves onto Yannis Stavrakakis. Stavrakakis largely builds upon Laclau’s work, attempting to supplement the latter’s conception of radical democracy with a Lacanian theory of enjoyment. For Stavrakakis, Lacanian ethics can inherently inform a theory of (radical) democracy. Ultimately, Stavrakakis attempts to formulate an alternative/ideal form of jouissance compatible with the democratic ethos. I will identify two main issues with Stavrakakis’ work. Firstly, like Laclau he places little emphasis upon the economic, in particular class. It is difficult to consider an immanent political intervention into the world of the excluded within Stavrakakis’ work. Secondly, Zizek strongly critiques Stavrakakis’ utopian construction of an alternative mode of jouissance, claiming that it is a total misrepresentation of Lacanian theory. Ultimately, for Zizek and in this thesis, there is no alternative mode of enjoyment, at least within the foreseeable future. Whilst I have much of this debate written up, more time needs to be spent on the issue of feminine enjoyment, particularly Zizek’s reading, along with his construction of the Lacanian ‘end of analysis’.

In terms of the application of feminine enjoyment to the economic, a group centred around the Rethinking Marxism journal has developed an approach very similar to Stavrakakis. As such this shall be included within the chapter. This group seek to suggest that whilst the class relationship is an impossible one – in the same manner as the sexual relationship – they do occur. Moreover, these class relationships can be broken down into the manner in which they respond to the problem of surplus labour. This group, in particular Yahya Madra and Ceren Oszelcuk argue that what is required is a class relationship that operates without exception (that of the hungry), a class relationship that would be deemed feminine. Thus, central to this chapter is a critique of the notion of a feminine/non-all class relationship will be developed, centring on both the impossibility of naming the elements of the class relationship and the impossibility of the feminine position. This critique naturally leads into Zizek’s politics, which is the subject of the sixth chapter.

Zizek’s politics is well treaded territory, but before mapping out the debates around his positions, I will develop a reading of his key concepts, most notably the Lacanian ‘traversal of the fantasy/end of analysis’, universality and class struggle. I will then suggest that although Zizek’s political approach has changed emphasis (and signifier’s) over the course of his work, his political stances are all iterations in response to the same impossibilities of both political action and turning Lacanian theory into a political vision. This corresponds to Zizek’s analytic method, which focuses on the absent cause of ideological positions, rather than the ideological positions themselves. Vital to my reading of Zizek’s work is his construction of the hungry as the place of concrete universality within capitalism, the part with no official part which determines the functioning of the hegemonic horizon.

My reading, taken through a debate with various theorists, including Laclau and Stavrakakis, is that in a certain sense Zizek’s work is politically impotent. However, this is not due to Zizek’s reading of the political, more the status of capitalism in our time (critiques of Zizek’s politics tend to focus on the end political position, rather than the preceding Lacanian theory), which lays bare the foundations of capitalism.

It is here that my seventh and final chapter, the impossibility of utopia , is developed. At first glance Utopia is a counter-intitutive position for any form of Lacanian- inspired psychoanalysis. No position appears more opposed to the Lacanian project than the development of a Utopian discourse, read in the conventional sense of an ‘ideal’ or imaginary place. Conversely , Zizek in silent conjunction with Fredric Jameson, suggests a separate modality of utopia, a utopia of the impossible, rather than the ideal. It is this position – utopia as the very suggestion that another mode of being is possible, without the imaginary coherence of the development of that mode – that makes Zizek’s politics radical, rather than the conservative, right-wing position, that many of his critics have suggested

Is there a beyond to capital?

2009-04-07T10:22:00.000+12:00

Constructing the non-place of capital; A Žižekian critique of HN’s Empire

Marx famously stated that the only limit to capital is capital itself. Nonetheless, the majority of leftist and radical leftist thought remains stuck between two equally impotent positions outside of Marx’s conclusion. The majority of leftist political activity remains within the limits of capitalism, implicitly accepting the ideology of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. This approach, characterized by the work of Jeffery Sachs, the practices of United States president Barack Obama and the official benevolence of the United Nations, argues that the productivity of capitalism can be utilized for the good of humanity, whether it is dealing with the ecological crisis, ending poverty or becoming more tolerant towards the Other. In particular the language of its politico-ideological supplement, liberal democracy is used to pacify the brutality of capitalism.

The eco-capitalist narrative acknowledges the symptoms of capitalism yet maintains that they can be resolved within the limits of capitalism. In this sense, eco-capitalism is similar to Marx’s conception of the transition from capitalism to communism. Marx believed that the communist economy would be able to capture the productivity evident in capitalism, without its symptoms. Unfortunately, Marx was unable to understand that this productivity was unique to capitalism itself, and without the torque provided by profit, capitalist productivity would not occur within capitalism. By contrast, the eco-capitalists still maintain their belief in profit, what they misunderstand is that it is profit itself which is causing the problems against which they rally. Thus whilst the eco-capitalist approach can pacify many of the symptoms of global capitalism, it is unable to recognise that it is capitalism itself which is producing these symptoms.

The alternative, radical but equally impotent, leftist approach is characterized by a utopian longing for a future generated entirely outside of capitalism. This approach, increasingly popular amongst post-Frankfurt school Marxists and leftist alike rejects the possibility of action within capitalism and instead searches for solutions beyond the limits of capitalism. This possible would be feasible, if it were not for its impossibility. There is no outside to capitalism. Capital has become an all-consuming beast, subsuming all available resources and including all possible resistance. Today there is no limit to capital except for – as Marx concluded – the limits internal to capitalism itself.

For this reason Žižek has constructed capitalism as the Real, the fundamental limit to all symbolization. As with any Žižekian conclusion, however, there is a twist. Capital-as-the-Real is not the Real of the clinic, but rather what he deems the symbolic Real, the formulaic background to symbolization. This position, as with much of Žižek’s analysis of political economy, remains in the abstract. Although the political consequences of this construction as wholly evident – no action is available within capitalism, or outside of its limits – the contours of the debate remain rough.

By contrast, Micheal Hardt and Antonio Negri (HN) have produced an analysis strong on detail. This analysis, primarily constructed in Empire, but supplemented in the sequel Multitude, depicts capitalism in the same mechanic, formulaic terms, but as a specifically politically economic, rather than strictly economic, system of Empire. Specifically, HN argue that Empire produces a postmodern form of sovereignty, embedded in a system of biopolitics, in which the very reproduction of shared social life has become the main source of surplus-value for capital. Despite capital’s apparent total conquest of global affairs, HN argue that capitalism has created the germs of the future of its own destruction in what they deem the Multitude. The multitude are the hegemonic breed of immaterial labourers who actively reproduce society. The multitude reproduce themselves through knowledge, communication and cooperation. In doing so the need for capital is lost; the workers themselves have become all that is required for the reproduction of society. For the first time, HN claim, absolute democracy is possible because workers are in possession of the skills and resources required to reproduce the economy outside of capital and in a manner which is inherently democratic; communication, cooperation and the universality of language.

What HN fail to consider, however, is that the multitude itself is a capitalist creation. Not only does the multitude exist only as resistance to empire, but their productivity is operative only within capitalist conditions. Moreover, the mode of democracy envisaged by HN is little different to that operative in today’s liberal democracy. That is, the multitude and its cooperative commons exist only through an exclusion, that of class struggle and the reserve army of labour.

By contrast, Žižek claims that the seeds of the new order do lie in capitalism itself, but not in terms of its imaginary. Rather they exist through the internal failure of capitalism. In constructing this perspective, Žižek labels four antagonisms which threaten capital. The first three, ecological destruction, intellectual property and bio-genetic technology can be included within the commons and as such are subject to the same critique as that applies to HN. The fourth, the increasingly forms of exclusion (which Žižek labels the new form of apartheid), holds the key to end of capitalism and the production of an alternative form of political economy. Žižek labels this possibility the ‘Communist Hypothesis’.

Thus instead of searching for a new revolutionary subject, such as the multitude, or an outside to capitalism, Žižek has rejects this continual search, stating that we are already in possession of such a revolutionary possibility; the communist hypothesis. Or, following the Hopi tribal maxim that he quotes, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for’.

The communist idea does not come from an idealist outside position, untouched by the vampirish claws of capital. Rather it comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, particularly the capitalist instantiation of the impossible class relationship. As such, the communist hypothesis arrives without determinate content. Its articulation is independent of previous articulations in the name of communism. What is to be done is yet to be articulated, but does not have to come from outside of ourselves. The answer lies within the contradictions of capitalism. It is not located with a specific agent or missing ideological narrative but comes rather through our own implication – as practioners rather than believers – in the contradictions of capitalism.

For Žižek, this revolutionary potential comes from our universal implication in the contradictions of capitalism. Revolution comes not from a specific subject such as the proletariat, but because in capitalism we are all proletarians. Nonetheless, despite hinting at the shape the communist hypothesis might take, Žižek limits his analysis to the end of capitalism. Within this analysis, however, lie the seeds of a fundamentally different form of political economy. This form is based upon a comedic articulation of the communist hypothesis in what can be deemed comedic communist democracy.

Capital-as-the-Real

“...in so far as we conceive of the polito-ideological resignification in terms of the struggle for hegemony, today’s Real which sets the limit to resignification is Capital: the smooth functioning of Capital is that which remains the same, that which ‘always’ returns to its place’, in the unconstrained struggle for hegemony” (Žižek, 2000b: 223).

Žižek’s assertion that global capital acts as a modality of the Real has been the source of much consternation from his critics, in particular Ernesto Laclau. Laclau’s main reproach is that in applying the Lacanian category of the Real to capitalism as a historical and political object, Žižek loses sight of the subtitles within both capital and the Real. Here, however, it is Laclau who misses the subtleties in Žižek’s argument. Capital as a modality of the Real is analogous neither to the Lacanian Real of the clinic nor the operation of the Real in ideological fantasy, although similarities do exist. Capital-as-Real is not that which cannot be signified, an inescapable trauma, although it may be experienced as such in large sections of global society. Capitalism does operate within the symbolic order and as such is subject to the same inconsistencies as any other entity. An initial analysis may suggest that Žižek is engaging a rhetorical device through which to make a point about the status of capital; capital has become the political force of our time, the point to which everything returns. Nonetheless, as is always the case with Žižek, there is some truth in appearance. Žižek is not simply using ‘Capital as Real’ for shock value; rather this assertion suggests a deeper point to which Žižek returns in his later work

Žižek's central argument is that global capital has become the determining factor in contemporary global affairs, but with a twist. Capital is not dominant in the totalitarian sense of exhausting all opposition although, both violence and systematic megalomania lie – disavowed rather than dominant – at the heart of the beast. Indeed, as I shall expand upon in regard to HN's description of the 'non-place' of capitalist sovereignty, it is difficult to even speak of capital in these terms. Capitalism is neither a form of civilisation, nor an ideology (Žižek, 2006: 181). Although in its most dominant (Western) forms capital is accompanied by its ideological supplement, democracy, democracy and capitalism are in no way necessarily entwined, as the rise of totalitarian capitalist China has displayed.

Žižek’s development of the capital as the Real has been a relatively sedate and contemporary occurrence. It was not until 1999 in the Ticklish Subject that Žižek begins to speak of Global Capital and the Real in the same terms when he states (in reference to global climate change and the El Nino effect) “This catastrophe thus gives body to the Real of our time: the thrust of Capital which ruthlessly disregards and destroys particular life-worlds, threatening the very survival of humanity”(Žižek, 1999: 4). Here though, Žižek is using the Real in a more conventional Lacanian sense; the Real as a horrific failure of the symbolic. Žižek’s initial considered conceptualisation of Capital as the Real occurred in his three-way collaboration with Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau, Contingency, Hegemony and Universality. Here Žižek considers Capital as the background against which all symbolisations must relate, a ‘limit to resignification’ (Butler, Laclau, & Žižek, 2000: 223,319).

Žižek’s definition of Capital as a symbolic form of the Real owes to his distinction (in the foreword to the 2^nd edition of For they Know Not What They Do, written in 2002) between the triadic modalities of the Real. In response to his own criticism of his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), that he endorsed a ‘quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan’ and the Real. That is, Žižek claims that he constructed the Real as a point of failure with the consequence that what is ethical is to except failure. Instead, Žižek wants to construct the Real not only as symbolic failure, but also as a positive point of excess. In order to do this, Žižek claims that the triadic Lacanian matrix Real-Imaginary-Symbolic is reproduced within itself. That is, we can have an Imaginary form of the Real and as well as a Symbolic form of the Imaginary. Of most interest to this argument is the Symbolic Real, which Žižek describes as ‘the Real as consistency’ (Žižek, 2002: xii).

Žižek had previously presented this argument in Contingency, Hegemony and Universality, where he describes Capital as ‘structuring in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for Hegemony’(Žižek, 2000c: 320). Žižek is clear, however, to make a distinction between Capital as a limit to signification and hegemonic struggle and Capital as the positive condition that creates a background against which hegemonic struggle occurs (Žižek, 2000c: 319).This last point is vital. It is not that Capital prevents the production of non-capitalist discourse, but rather that these discourses occur on a background (if a somewhat passive one) that determines the parameters in which it operates. Therefore, it can appear that an outside to Capital exists. Clearly not all relations are capitalist relations. Rather capital is structured similarily to one of its iconic structures, the shopping mall. The ‘mall’ allows all apparent freedoms and is experienced as a site of consumptive enjoyment. One is free to move around and experiences no apparent repression, except in acting against the interests of the mall. What the mall has achieved is the subsumption of public space; the historical village centre, with all its associated public space and room for dissent, is now contained within the mall itself. In this sense one can be free within the mall – and within capitalism – only by following the rules and internalising the structures of the mall. An outside exists only to the extent that we are allowed to belief it does; you are free to choice to leave, but no one does – there is outside only in terms of the impossibility of resistance

Žižek has subsequently refined his argument, claiming that capital is the (absent) cause to which all life returns. If capital is only present as an underlying (unconscious) social code, its presence is certainly felt on the bodies of those within the system and in this manner capital has more of a presence than one could ever hope to imagine. Nor is capital absent from the collective imagination, even though the signifier ‘democracy’ is often favoured above ‘capitalism’; United States politicians are fond of stating that the collapse of financial markets will not bring with it the breakdown of democracy, as if derivatives and democracy are a necessary couplet.

Rather capital is the absent cause in relation to the fundamental definition of the Lacanian Real; the elementary structuring point which determines in its very absence, the traumatic social antagonism that cannot be conceptualised within the symbolic order. More precisely, the Real is not the disavowed point to which we have no access, but rather the very point of that distortion (Žižek, 2008: 287-288). The Lacanian cause is thus strictly absent from the signifying chain and should be distinguished between causality and structure. Here causality is the regular unravelling of the code of social practices, whereas the cause is that which intervenes in that chain (Fink, 1995: 31). A cause is thus an absent cause; absent from the chain of causality but present in its affects as it disrupts the automatic functioning of the signifying chain.

Capitalism is thus absent in the same way one can consider unconscious desire to be absent from the psyche; what is absent is the cause, which only reveals itself as an affect. The unconscious acts is structured like a language, or more specifically like a grammatical chain, with certain rules and impossibilities (Fink, 1995: 7). The unconscious functions autonomously, repeating the structure of its chain. This is the same with capitalism as the symbolic Real. Capital is ultimately repetition of a symbolic structural logic regardless of ideological context. Within the structural chain of capital, an impossibility emerges. This impossibility is best conceptualised around Bruce Fink’s distinction between the two modalities of the Real.

Fink states that the Real can be divided into the Real before language (R1) and the Real after language (r2). R1 exists only as an absence, but is given a presence by language which attempts to conceptualise its own transcendental conditions of possibility. R2 emerges as a response to the symbolisation of this impossibility; r2 occurs at the points of failure within the symbolic system. Thus, in relation to the capital-as-the-symbolic-real R1 operates as the transcendental condition of possibility for the system. That is, there is no class relationship. However, capitalism, as a form of economy, attempts to symbolise this failure, producing its own impossibility (R2), class struggle, the instantiation of the failed class relationship within the capitalist political economy and its own nodal point, surplus value or profit.

Thus class is not only the factor that is disavowed within capitalism, but the very cause of the distortion which prevents access to class. Class takes on this structural role because the economy is non-All – class is the extimate core of the economy – which makes the economy inherently political. That is, class struggle is the existence of the political in the economy. Thus the economy is not deterministic in the sense of being the point to which all social relations return, but rather – through the politically of class struggle – the very point of the distortion of class relations (Žižek, 2008: 291-292).

But why should the economy, or rather class struggle, play this role? Can we not, in the Laclauian sense, claim that any domain can take on the place of dominant distortion through the hegemonic play of signification? This point remains the fundamental point of division between Laclau and the psychoanalytic approach whereby an element determines in advance the terrain of battle. For Žižek, the status of the economy is simply the Marxist hypothesis, the wager which determines his field of interest. Just as for Freud all unconscious desire is sexual desire for Marx it is class struggle that determines the field. In both cases the reasoning is the same. Class – or sexuality – defines the terrain not because it is dominant, but because of its inherent failure. This failure – that there is neither a sexual relationship nor a class relationship – produces a structural instability in both the psyche and in shared social life to which we are forced to return (Žižek, 2008: 295).

The impossibility of class struggle within capital, which I shall return to in detail in latter in this paper, is the impossibility within the symbolic code of capital, the impossible absent cause that determines the persistent revolutionising of the code in advance. This absence, however, is not acknowledged in all but the most baldly conservative articulations of global capitalism. Under neo-liberal ideology, the capitalist system is considered far from perfect, yet is regarded as not only historically the most effective system, but also the most beneficial system possible. In its most strongly ideological narrative, this approach contends that capitalism is simply a reflection of human nature and no more perfectible. Capitalism will operate in sporadic cycles and will be unjust to some degree. This may seem complacently benign when it comes to the fluctuating price of cheese, but becomes more brutal in regards to naked ambition for limited global resources. It is one thing to justify inflation, quite another to consider the prospect of an outright Oil war between the United States and China. It is also a perspective much more likely to be backed by those on the positive side of capitalistic justice.

Instead capitalist class relationships continue, allow with the autonomous repetition of the capitalist structure, under the guise of an imaginary ideological structure. As noted, capital itself is neither an ideology nor a form of civilisation. Instead a supplement is required in order to distort the impossibility of class struggle. Much of Žižek’s theory revolves around the point; the work of ideology, disavowal and fetishism. Žižek does not, however, make a direct link between the functioning of capital as a modality of the Real and of the political system. Instead, for Žižek politics and capital appear to have an arbitrary relationship in much the same manner as they would for Ernesto Laclau; although the politics of truth around capitalism must relate to class struggles, politics itself operates independently from the conditions of possibility established by capitalism. Capitalism sets a certain limit and provides a cause, but – for Žižek – politics, ideology and our form of civilisation operate with a degree of autonomy from capital itself. That is, the political narrative established is little more than an attempt to symbolise the impossibility of class struggle and capitalism. Capitalism certainly establishes itself as the dominant player in culture, the dominant source of jouissance, but this is not necessarily so.

This perspective is rejected by HN, must notably in their seminal text Empire in which, whilst establishing much the same mechanistic tendencies to capitalism, they construct capitalism as a historical form of sovereignty. The capitalist empire is as much a matter of politics, ideology and enjoyment as much an economic structuring chain. It is to this perspective that we now turn.

Empire

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s concept of ‘Empire’ produces a similar construction of global capitalism, without the specific reference to class struggle. Empire, not to be confused with what HN consider to be the modernist modality of ‘imperialism’, is a historical development under which capitalism has come to dominate the production and reproduction of shared social life. Although HN do not utilise a Lacanian vocabulary, Empire is confluent with Žižek’s ‘capital-as-Real’ thesis. Under Empire, capital retains the mechanistic quality proscribed to it by Žižek; HN state “the machine seems to predetermine the exercise of authority and action across the entire social space. Every movement is fixed and can seek its own designated place only within the system itself, in the hierarchical relationship accorded to it” (HN, 2000; 14).

HN, however, extend this thesis beyond the economic; the mechanistic quality of empire is not limited to the repetition of the symbolic logic of capital. Empire goes beyond this logic into the instantiation of the capitalism as a political-ideological mechanism for the reproduction of shared social life. In doing so, HN contend that the reproduction of social life has become an intimate part of the operation of capital, which, along with renewed forms of (postmodern) sovereignty, has expanded the terms of capital into what they deem Empire.

Empire includes not only the production of surplus value and class struggle (which HN place less emphasis upon, evidently because of its contemporarily abstract character) but also the political infrastructure which supports the economy. More importantly, for HN, empire is constructed upon communication and cooperation between humans, which has become the predominant feature of capital. That is, one is no longer able to make a strict distinction between politics, the economy and social life. Instead, under Empire all elements of social life and the human condition have become subsumed into the capitalist edifice, such that it no longer makes sense to talk of politics or economy. Rather we have entered an era of ‘biopolitical production', the production of social life itself, in which the economic, the political, and the cultural increasingly overlap and invest one another’ (HN, 2000; xiii). There is no politics outside of economy, nor space outside of capital. All production, whether it is material goods or social relations, is capitalist production. This new modality of production, which HN label ‘immaterial labour’, along which the changing contours of global sovereignty, led HN to designate Empire as a distinctly postmodern phenomenon.

HN are not the first theorists to suggest that postmodernism – rather than being a radical form of emancipation from identity – is just the latest form of capitalism. Fredric Jameson has[MU1] made this argument most powerfully. Previously theorists had considered capital to require the parochial discipline that characterised the industrial era. Modernity's combined and uneven entry into a postmodern era was considered to be a mortal threat to the interests of capitalism. Indeed, HN suggest the refusal of factory discipline was a central factor in the economic crisis of the 1970s. Nonetheless, as Jameson postulate, the burgeoning development of social identities that came with the birth of postmodernism became a seamless cure for the ills of overproduction, as the new identities were ideal for the development of new products and new markets. Rather than acting as a threat to capitalism, working women, racial enlightenment and sexual reform allowed the development of new and profitable markets. Postmodernism may have been experienced as liberation for those outside of the hegemony of the white man within western nations, but it has achieved little more than the commodification of cultural difference. As Žižek suggests (see Žižek, 2000a), the normative expansion provided by postmodernity should be celebrated, but we should not mistake these new social movements and identity politics as the problems of our time. Westerners may have a more diverse range of restaurants at which to eat, but for those whom experience eating as an infrequent necessary, postmodern liberation remains entirely Other.

HN’s construction of Empire as a postmodern edifice goes beyond that identified by Jameson or Žižek. Although they acknowledge the hegemony of postmodern performance within contemporary culture, Empire follows a postmodern logic at a much deeper level, in the instantiation of sovereignty and relations of production. That is, empire is not regarded as postmodern in its expression of modernist capitalist relations, but is postmodern at its very core.

The changing nature of capitalist sovereignty is reflected in the movement from a disciplinary society to a society of control, where power is directly bio-power, internalised into the body as the whole of social life comes to be administered in what is known as the ‘panoptican affect’ (Hardt & Negri, 2000; 23-24). Instead of a single entity controlling power, sovereignty is rather constructed via the processes of capitalism. Whilst we can acknowledge an influential structure of governing organisations, including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods financial instruments, regional trade organisations and agreements and the easily forgotten nation-state itself (as well as more local forms of sovereignty within the state), the dominant form of sovereignty within Empire is what HN label ‘ether’ (HN, 2000; 346); the reproduction of shared social life (in the name of profit) by immaterial labour through cooperation and communication.

Thus, in contrast to modernist imperialism, for HN Empire is without exception; all potentially fall within its grasp. Neither has it a home, despite the apparent hegemony of the United States. Empire has no 'Rome', instead it is organised around the ‘non-place’ of Capital, a non-place that Žižek labels the Real, or, more pertinently, class struggle. Instead of the modernist form of governance – by which a transcendental entity, whether Monarchic or an elected power, acts as a sovereign guarantee for political life; postmodern sovereignty exists without an apparent governing exception. Instead the non-place of sovereignty is mediated by the seemingly seamless flow of ether; sovereignty is guaranteed only to extent that it is reproduced in our social relations; nothing exists outside of the existence of capitalist social relations which might secure the system. Instead capitalist is actively – if unknowingly – reproduced by those who participate.

Much has been celebrated about the postcolonial era and the associated decline of the nation state. Theorists have come to suggest that the decline of stable identities and power relations which result from the loss of a Hobbesian sovereign, has offered the prospect of widespread emancipation. A dark side does appear, however, in two dimensions; both within western society and in the expanded exploitation of the hungry majority, although HN do not expand upon the latter.

Postmodernity has not meant the end of global sovereignty. The Hobbesian image of the social contract may be struggling, but sovereignty itself continues. Sovereignty is no longer produced by the discipline of an external guarantee, but rather the internationalisation of power in the Foucauldian 'biopolitical' society. The image of the panoptican and biopolitical control had become part of social life well before any transition occurred beyond modernity. What is unique about postmodern sovereignty, HN argue, is that biopolitical control has become the modality of power, not the support for power.

Governmental organisations certainly exist, but their role is one of control, not guarantee; they provide the administrative support for the deployment of the institutions of the biopolitical society that is Empire. Governments have become little more than instruments for the measurement of the flows of commodities and population they are charged with administrating in the name of capital (HN, 2000; 31). Beyond the representatives of government, the institutions of our bio-political society include the vast array of monitoring devices evident in our societies, from the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, online 'research' and the more Orwellian 'anti-terrorism' acts passed in the post 9/11 world. More pertinently for HN, the biopolitics of Empire are produced and reproduced by the immaterial labour which dominates postmodern capitalism. These industries, characterised by communication and cooperation implicitly reproduce the sovereignty of Empire through the production, and control of knowledge and ideas. The imposition of this power goes by unnoticed, serving as it does at our pleasure, but for their profit.

Thus Capital within Empire is totalising; it is impossible to speak of Empire without Capital, yet at the same time Capital appears the silent partner, reproducing itself through the everyday functioning of social life. Capital is evil in the terms of Hannah Arendt, in its very banality it allows for suffering on an unimaginable scale. This is the strength of capitalism. Capitalism requires no one to believe in it. Few actively and explicitly support capitalism, although they may profess an interest in the wellbeing of its elements. Ideological arguments may occur over democracy or multi-culturalism, but no such debate is required to secure the status of global capital. Capitalism reproduces itself through our everyday practices. We do not have to believe, we simply have to do; capitalism is a distinctly ontological, rather than epistemological entity. One becomes a card-carrying capitalist by brandishing a credit card rather than a membership card. No one door-knocks to sell capitalism, only its wares.

Such is the impossibility of acting against capitalism. How does one become an anti-capitalist? Perhaps only in death. All those who walk this earth are capitalists and there is no possibility of living withdrawal whilst the system still dominants. To reproduce oneself and community is to be a capitalist. To consume, to produce, is to be a capitalist. Even those who remain most ideologically opposed (I place myself in this category) cannot help but practice. The only out is death, symbolic (such as the fantasmatic position of ‘living outside of the grid) or otherwise.

Capitalism, or rather Empire, has achieved this level of hermeneutic self-containment through what HN label ‘immaterial labour’; the deployment of the communication and cooperation are then the hegemonic forms of labour in capitalism. This transformation includes not only the most obvious example of the change, such as social networking sites These sites – most notably Facebook and MySpace – commodify human relationships by offering a free and attractive service to users who update their personal details in order to interact with their peers. This information is then stored and sold to advertisers, both for research purposes and for the benefit of more direct advertising. The business model of these sites is similar to that of newspaper – the selling of readers’ attention to advertisers – with more interaction. Here social relationships and communities are actively created and reproduced for the sole purpose of the production of profit.

More than the obvious changes, however, the move to immaterial production has affected all industries. Just as the industrial revolution transformed the farm into a factory (by imposing factory relations of production) the knowledge revolution has turned the farm into a laboratory. Here knowledge has become the key resource; whether the product is physical or intangible. Such was the folly of New Zealand’s mission at the beginning of the 21^st century to transform itself into a ‘knowledge’ economy. To many this brought on the beginnings of a national identity crisis as it was assumed that the advent of a knowledge economy would bring about the end of the nation’s traditional agricultural culture/economy. The ‘Green revolution of the 1970s also provides an example of the domination of agriculture by knowledge and immaterial labour.

The industry which embodies both these processes – that of the practicing belief of everyday capitalists and immaterial labour – is finance capitalism. Finance capitalism is the ultimate example of immaterial labour, whereby production itself does not exist; vast sums of money change hands (in 2008 the value of financial trading equalled that of the last 100 years of ‘physical’ trade) through an intangible global system of co-operation and communication. Yet that money exists not only because we believe it to exist (money being a system of trust whereby I believe that the currency which you offer me is ‘legitimate’) but because our societal practices establish this belief for us. We have no choice but to use money and in established economies only the most neurotic users would concern themselves with the acceptance of their money.

Financial capital is itself a postmodern industry. Financial capital, although always operative in some form, established its dominance in the 1970s[MU2] . The 1970s saw the advent of two vital and interlinked trends, over-production and the decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard. The crisis of over-production, combined with the oil shocks early in the decade, led a mass of surplus looking for an investment home. Some of this surplus was redirected into newly established 3^rd world markets, but the core of the problem remained. It solution was the development of the financial industry. Key to this move was Richard Nixon’s move to break to the US Dollar from the gold standard (HN, 2000; 266). The move to floating currencies was followed, in various speeds, by the majority of nations. This development was of historical significance, removing the guarantee of the ‘general equivalence’ of money. Instead, in a definitively postmodern manoeuvre, money no longer exists, there are only currencies. Such a move is part of a historical development; money has moved from being an element of value itself, to being supported by an item of supposed value (the gold standard) to its current state as a purely virtual occurrence, given a presence only because we believe.

The significance of the removal of money as a universal general equivalent, to be replaced by currencies as particular embodiments of equivalency cannot be underestimated. In itself this is a particular postmodern development. Postmodernism is characterised by a lack of stability caused by the disappearance of meta-narratives of anchoring points that would provide a guarantee for the social order. These universal points acted as a ‘general equivalent’ against which other elements would relate. By contrast postmodernity is characterised by a flatness – there is no universal element would maintains order – broken up by difference; each particular element operates in differentiation relation to another particular element. Thus the financial industry has become a postmodern, or perhaps even feminine, order.

The breakdown of general equivalency has resulted in the financial industry, along with an increasingly complex variety of financial ‘products’ being based upon the trading of currencies, rather than products. Indeed, physical commodities are no longer the basis of much trade. Certainly the growth in physical trade, production and consumption continues, as the climate crisis reveals. Nonetheless, increasingly commodities are traded simply as a holder of currencies, particularly through mathematical ‘derivative’ trading. The era of a general equivalence which establishes value is over; the symbolic formula of capitalism has entered postmodernism and there is nothing that can contain it other than itself and its own spiralling and self-destructive tendencies[C3] . As of 2009, we are seeing these self-destructive tendencies in action as the credit ‘bubble’ has burst, most of all because people have lost their faith in money. To a certain degree actors have come to realise that money does not exist and have withdrawn their confidence from the system. For this reason the main task of the Obama administration – obstinately to hand over unthinkable amounts of US currency – is to restore confidence in the value of money.

HN’s conception of Empire is largely an extension of the Žižekian thesis (although neither Žižek nor HN write in response to each other). Empire maintains the same systematic qualities that make radical action, both within and outside of capitalism, impossible. What Empire adds to Žižek’s work is the construction of the current instantiation of class or power relations within capitalism. Or, more accurately, the operation of these relations in ideology and the political realm. If Žižek has constructed capital as a mode of the symbolic Real (with more emphasis given to the first term than has otherwise been given) than Empire captures the capitalist relationship between the symbolic and the imaginary. Empire is a historical construction of the power relations, ideological narratives and reproduction of social life within the boundaries set by the logic of capital, as established by Žižek.

Nonetheless, Empire cannot be simply added as a supplement to Žižek’s work. Although much of HN’s argumentation is confluent with the Žižekian thesis, there are two notable points of differentiation; the status and hope provided by the multitude. For HN the multitude are the germs of the future produced within capitalism. Conversely, whilst the multitude are a possible point of resistance against capitalism – any agent involved in the encapsulation of the commons holds a radical potential – they remain a resistant group particular to capitalism. Moreover, rather than provide the hope for what HN label ‘absolute democracy’, the multitude have more in common with contemporary liberal democracy; both are based upon the exclusion of surplus labour. Rather the immaterial labour of the multitude, it is the universality enabled by the unwanted horde of today’s political economy that provides the only hope for a radically different future. It is to the multitude that we now turn.

The Multitude

The advent of immaterial production has, however, been both a boom and a crisis for capital. In most circumstances, the system has been able to revolutionise itself to make these crisis into sources of profit, but the move to immaterial production has created difficulties that have yet to be fully integrated. There are two significant problems, the changing nature of private property and the increased significance of the worker in the production process.

Increasingly, the knowledge economy – based upon knowledge, communication and cooperation as intangible resources – has struggled to fit into the capitalist mode of private property. Although immaterial labour dominates production, the transition from industrial production has not been seamless. Corporations continue to struggle to effectively commodify and profit from intangible sources of production. Private property is proving inadequate of the task of immaterial production, as corporations are finding it more and more difficult to privatise and generate profit models from immaterial elements of human cooperation and natural life.

Digital technology has proved one of the more difficult areas in which to impose property ‘rights’. Significantly, digital technology has nullified the role of scarcity in the market, as digital commodities can be reproduced at almost no cost. Privatisation becomes increasingly difficult when lay-users can easily replicate the product. For this reason, in order to profit from these technologies, much effort is put into restricting access to the product. Hence large industries, most significantly in the entertainment industry, but also print media, are struggling to match up their profit models with the new forms of technology.

As both Žižek and HN suggest, the latter more giving it more significance than the former, the apparent failure of private property to respond adequately to immaterial production provides a notable point of traction for communist thought. Under Empire cooperation has become inherent to labour in a way that it never has previously. In this sense labour power moves from variable capital (a force activated by capital itself) to capital itself; knowledge has become the key means of production. For HN, however, the move subversive potential lies with what they label the ‘Multitude’. HN contend that;

“Today, productivity, wealth and the creation of social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational and affective networks. In the expression of its own creative energies, immaterial labour thus seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism” (HN, 2000; 294).

If knowledge is the most important means of production, then for the first time the seeds of a new order lie with the workers themselves. Workers no longer need capital to reproduce shared social life; the workers are already doing so in their everyday movements. Capital loses its organising function and becomes purely parasitic (Žižek, 2008; 351). The material reproduction of society occurs in the workplace already in the forms of communication, cooperative and affective labour produced by the multitude. Rather than workers being solely operators of fixed capital, deploying the resources provided for work, the immaterial labourer is now a source of capital in itself; knowledge. The worker is thus a unit of variable capital and no longer requires specific sources of capital in order to reproduce itself.

Thus, while ‘from one perspective Empire stands clearly over the multitude and subject’s it to the rule of its overarching machine, as a new Leviathan. At the same time, however, from the perspective of social productivity and creativity, from what we have been calling the ontological perspective, the hierarchy is reversed. The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude’ (HN, 2000; 62).

Therefore, for HN, the multitude is the inherent form of resistance produced within capital. There may not be an outside within Empire which provides a nodal point for the subversion of capital, rather this point is produced by capitalism itself; capital provides the seeds of its own destruction. If postmodern production is immaterial, than the most important means of production lies with the bodies and the minds of the workers. Capital is no longer machinery and tools, but is increasingly immaterial in itself. As Žižek comments “It was Marx who emphasised how material production is always also the (re)production of the social relations within which it occurred; with today’s capitalism, however, the production of social relations is the immediate end/goal of production” (2006; 262).

The role of the multitude - and here HN return to old-fashioned Marxism – is to become conscious of their position as both subject and object of history and come to determine the world themselves, to break free of capital and realise the ‘absolute’ democracy that they are already in the process of creating. The multitude are in the paradoxical position of both holding an inherent potential for resistance to the system yet being the point of subversion of that resistance. It is the reproduction of knowledge and social relations by the multitude which holds the potential for radical action, yet at the same time the ideological narrative of capital – itself reproduced by the multitude, though in the implicit name of Empire – prevents the realisation of that radical potential. Knowledge maybe power, but within Empire it is immanently contained within that power.

The most pertinent point of this perspective is that it is difficult to determine the enemy within the enemy because of the sovereignty of ether and the ‘non-place’ of power within Empire. Ironically, given the shared communicative mechanisms which define the multitude, the problem they experience is a lack of clear language, both in identifying the enemy and articulating the future (HN, 2000; 210). Developing a common language against the multitude is to a large degree the task for the multitude, as in our society, constructed by the media images, the media have a monopolic grasp over the ontology of the masses (2000; 322). Once this can be established, and the multitude become conscious of their dominating status, all that is required is locating and knocking off the nominal head. Communism and absolute democracy appear upon us, all that is to be done is to realise our fate.

Yet, is this approach not, however, as Žižek suggests, confluent with the ultimate capitalist fantasy of frictionless capitalism, capitalism without governance, simply organising itself through the invisible hand of the market? (2006; 263). The democracy of the multitude and frictionless capital are sadly entwined because the both required the same propeller for sovereign-less development; the capitalist form of the appropriation of surplus-value. Here surplus-value takes the same structural position as the Lacanian objet a; both the condition of possibility and impossibility of the system. Objet a, like surplus-value, is the contradiction of system which drives it onward. For Žižek then, the democracy inherent in immaterial labour and the multitude occurs only because of the capitalist form. Without this form, the multitude would not be driven to interact. It is not a matter of simply maintaining the capitalist form without owners, this would only serve to either reproduce the contradictions would allow for the form of surplus-value (and it is these contradictions – class struggle, climate change and the hungry – against which we should rally) or the form of surplus-value itself would collapse without the imposition of objet a by the corporate structure.

In this sense the Multitude cannot be considered to be a group in themselves, rather they arise only as a point of resistance to capitalism. Such a group may be interesting in terms of a theory of revolution, but has little in relation to a theory of a new mode of the material reproduction of shared social life. Like Marx, HN’s mistake is to conclude that capitalist productivity is possible if the contradiction which drives that productivity – class relations – is removed. This is, as Žižek suggests, Lacan’s central critique of Marx, whereby Lacan identifies a homology between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment, suggesting that both rely upon dialectic between lack and excess.

Moreover, while HN’s multitude can be regarded as a specifically capitalist grouping, the biggest failure of HN’s work is the immateriality of their construction of capitalism, the very feature which allows for the development of the multitude. What HN miss is that the absolute democracy that they believe can be developed from within Empire is based upon the same exclusion which constitutes liberal democracy; that of the reserve army of labour. There is no reason to suggest that a communism reconstruction of immaterial labour would include the currently excluded populations of the world any more than is currently the case.

Symptomatic of such a failure is HN definition of the proletariat, which is so wide as to diffuse the real difference within this category, particularly in terms of suffering. Here HN state ‘ we understand proletariat as a broad category that includes all those whose labour is directly or indirectly exploited by and subjected to capitalist norms of production and reproduction’ (HN, 2000; 52). To compare the wealth of a professional sportsman and the poverty of a third-world farmer – both equally subsumed into capitalist exploitation – is to lose sight of the contours of exploitation and suffering. Moreover, it is to lose the reason why we oppose capital at all; the necessary suffering it imposes. For HN, ‘exploitation occurs, but it increasingly hard, perhaps impossible to designate a place of exploitation – the non-place of exploitation – exploitation can no longer be localised and quantified – instead they are universal qualities’ (HN, 2000; 209). Consequently, although exploitation and domination are still experienced concretely, on the flesh of the multitude, they are nonetheless amorphous in such a way that it seems there is no place left to hide’ (2000; 211). One can no longer exploit the worker, only cooperation amongst workers (Žižek, 2008; 356). Yet this construction of the proletarian and its exploitation is vital for HN’s conception of resistance to Empire; the multitude.

What HN miss is the split between the two, parallax sides of capitalism. One the one hand are the postmodern corporations, characterised by HN’s immaterial labour. On the other side - generally the other side of the world - is the remaining material labour, a capitalist historical tribute to industrial era production and suffering. There is no hope of the two coming together; material production is not becoming anymore immaterial. For this reason HN are incorrect to assert that capital is purely parasitic; it has an organising function, bringing these two sides together (Žižek, 2008; 359).

Class struggle and the excluded

It is the excluded underside of Empire that HN and Negri do not focus on. Yes, the 'multitude' may be actively reproducing society through communication, but it is the reserve army of labour built up in the majority world which is truly supporting capitalism. These workers are outside of the multitude, even in their status as proletarian. HN claim that Empire has extended exploitation to the point where all of the multitude, from call centre workers in India to marketing executives in California are deemed to be proletarian. It seems that the geographical dislocation of the working class has meant that both everyone and no-one are part of the proletariat. That is, except for the part with no part; the world's urban poor. In these massive urban slums – slums in which all of the world three billion strong population increase is predicted to occur – unemployment has reached meaningless levels, in some places reaching 80[MU4] %; employment being a marginal exception. This disparate grouping, which might otherwise be labelled the lumpenproletariat, are the new brand of entrepreneur, a neo-liberal dream in a Hobbesian nightmare. These enterprising business-workers sell whatever they can to survive, whether it be knick-knacks or their bodies. Their inadvertent subversion of intellectual property in the huge market for inauthentic designer merchandise may be an example of multitudian anti-capitalism, but there is nothing liberating about the circumstances of their lifestyle.

The urban proletarian of the 3^rd world are the excluded from HN's image of Empire and the word of biopolitics. Indeed they are the exception that allows the whole to function; the concrete universal. In this sense, we do not live in a postmodern world, at least in terms of sovereignty. Rather, the place of exceptionality has changed. It is no longer the king or the government who guarantee the order, but rather an excluded exception, below, rather than above, the symbolic order. If postmodernity is characterised by a flatness distinguished only by relations of difference between elements, then capitalism and Empire do not fit into this category.

The issue of sovereignty and exceptionality is vital to this debate. Yahya Madra and Ceren Ozsecluk (MO) consider capitalism to be based around an exception, that of the Board of Directors[MU5] . Under this construction the Board are the exception because they are they are the only grouping within the organisation who receive a slice of surplus without having contributed to the production of surplus. A number of corrections need to be made to this point. Firstly, MO remain trapped within an industrialised schema by which to be productive is to produce materially. Whilst this thesis remains committed to a materialist construction of capitalism, HN are correct in asserting the (qualitative) hegemony of immaterial production. In this case, the Board of Directors, in producing knowledge and control are as much involved in production as any element of the capitalist organisation. Rather, a more effective target would be the (silent) shareholders, those who contribute only the conditions of possibility for the organisation (fixed capital), yet received a shared of the surplus.

This appears a feasible conclusion, yet it misses the core point. Neither the Board of Directors, nor are the shareholders are in any way excluded from capitalism, either in terms of ideological construction or receiving surplus labour. Instead those actually excluded from capitalism are the reserve army of labour. Not only are they excluded from the reception of surplus, but they are excluded from the ideological construction of capitalism. Not in terms of their existence, but rather they role within the capitalist system. The exclusion of these (non)workers is not specific to any actor or grouping. Exploitation remains in the abstract, only operational as the condition of possibility for the functioning of the system they inhabit. For the excluded, however, there is nothing abstract about their suffering. They ensure that exploitation is experienced concretely; in pathetic defiance to HN’s concept of immaterial labour and abstract cooperation-exploitation, their exploitation is purely of the body, not any aspect of cooperation or community. More accurately their exploitation and suffering comes from the very division from community and cooperation. The excluded are truly the necessary and constitutive exception which must be excluded for the continued functioning of the system, and so it is with capital and its reserve army of labour. The excluded, therefore, constitute the capitalist form of the class relationship. It is the exclusion of these masses which allows for the capitalist form of the production and distribution of surplus value.

Capitalism’s reliance upon its own exception has led MO to argue that what is required is form of political economy based upon the Lacanian logic of the feminine. Here, in a manner broadly similar to postmodernism as well as HN’s construction of Empire and the Multitude, the feminine is without exception; the feminine system is exceptional only to itself. In contrast to the masculine logic of exception, whereby an exceptional element is excluded in order to constitute an otherwise impossible set, the feminine set cannot exclude any element from its porous borders. That is, there is nothing that cannot be included within the set; likewise nothing that can be excluded from the set. The non-exclusive feminine set can never say what it is; the feminine set can never seal itself off or define its identity against another set. In Lacanian parlance, the feminine does not exist.

The non-exclusivity of the feminine universal has led MO to argue that feminine logic should be the model for a new modality of political economy in terms of the ‘impossible’ class relationship. Class is assumed to be impossible because ‘class’ cannot constitute itself fully; there is no meta-narrative which can guarantee the distribution of surplus (labour). Thus just as Lacan concluded that ‘there is no sexual relationship’ because there is no possible perfect sexual unity between the sexes, MO and Žižek (although taking a slightly different path) claim that there is no class relationship. Class struggle is always constituted around its own impossibility. Hence, any system of political economy is always split by the impossibility of class struggle. Class struggle becomes the absent cause in the symbolic formula of capital; it is the point around which capitalism fails, yet also the point which provides for its impetus.

Nonetheless, although it is easy to conclude that the lack of class relationship means that class relationships do not exist, they do, but they are always lacking. Class relationships certainly exist within capitalism – the exceptionality previously discussed being an example of those relationships – but they are disavowed within an ideological matrix in which history itself is dead. HN’s construction of Empire is just another narrative attempting to heal the wound of class struggle. Under Empire and immaterial labour class struggle is not fundamentally altered, the struggle is just expressed in different terms.

Feminine class relationships acknowledge both the presence and impossibility of class relationships and struggle. On the surface, they appear to be an inviting, if abstract, concept. Feminine class relationships are without exception, and thus, argue MO, without exploitation. Although they do not explore the issue in detail, the implication is that the instantiation of feminine class relationships (based upon a feminine logic of enjoyment) would greatly improve the circumstances of the hungry by including them within both the production and consumption of surplus. Likewise, the implicit assumption is that a feminine economy would not require the spiralling growth of capitalism and would thus avoid, or subdue, the threat of ecological collapse.

Capitalism, however, has already proven itself capable of integrating the feminine, as can be seen in the financial industry and postmodern culture. What it cannot integrate, however, is its own failure; the excluded. Such a trans-fantasmatic integration of the excluded into political economy could only force a new order into being, a new order that we can provisionally label comedic communist democracy. In order to follow this hope we must continue to believe in the possibility of action against capitalism. As I have illustrated, however, this action cannot come from outside of capital (which does not exist) nor from within the limitations of the system. Moreover, although capitalism does produce the ‘germs of the future’ in the dialectics of its own impossibility, HN’s conception of the multitude still does not institute the full dimension of universality operative in class struggle. It is only this dimension, this concrete universality, which is revealed in the presence of the excluded in the face of global capital which institutes the possibility of universality. In order to access this radical possibility, however, Žižek suggests that we require more than the critique of the existing. Rather we need to hold onto the possibility of something beyond capital, a possibility Žižek labels the communist hypothesis.

The Communist Hypothesis

The communist hypothesis is neither an ideal, a semblance or a presence to come in the deconstructive sense, nor has it any necessary relation to previous communist instantiations which focused on either property or the state. Rather it is the task of dedicated anti-capitalists and the focus of this thesis to consider the manner in which it must be articulated in today’s conditions.

Thus the communist hypothesis cannot be a transcendental idea. Rather it arises as the only radical response to the contradictions of global capital. Western Marxism, beginning with the Frankfurt school, has become increasingly critical towards the Hegelian-Marxist notion of determinate negation, by which any new form of society emerges from the contradictions immanent to the current order. Instead, Marxism and other forms of Radical Leftism have adopted a utopia longing for an order which is wholly Other; an order which develops from an unmediated outside.

Žižek’s notion of the communist hypothesis is strictly opposed to any notion of an outside to capitalism. Rather Žižek rehabilitates the Hegelian determinate negation in his theory of universality. Under this theory the concrete universal – that which is excluded from the ‘private’ order, yet exceeds its boundaries and remains immanent to the totality – stands directly for universality through determinate negation. Thus the communist hypothesis comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, not from a mythically unspoiled outside.

Žižek argues that these contradictions are embodied in four antagonisms which threaten capitalism; the possibility of ecological collapse, the contradictions between immaterial labour, intellectual property and private property, the development of new scientific technologies which are changing the nature of life in its barest form and the new forms of exclusion, which Žižek labels new forms of apartheid. This exclusion is most notable in the rapidly expanding slums of the third world, but increasingly an underclass is developing within the western world itself. In the US this population is increasingly visible, even though the US underclass is increasingly located in the military or the overcrowded prison system. This group acts as reserve or surplus labour, the existence of which maintains the status of labour as a commodity and the capitalistic class relations. The radical potential of this group is not their poverty as such – horrific as it is – but rather the walls and divisions used to exclude them from the rest of society.

Communism, in the face of these antagonisms, operates as the only alternative in response to the apparent subsumption of the symptoms of capital in the context of Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. This thesis has becomes so maligned it is passé to do so, yet it continues to dominate socio-political performance. The communist hypothesis does not emerge from outside of this history, but rather upon the basis of the exclusion around which capital is founded. Under Žižek’s construction of the four dominant symptoms of capitalism, there is one symptom that defines the group; poverty, or rather the exclusion of those in poverty. The other three contradictions have been able to be included within the limits of capitalism. Environmentalism, despite the apparent radical possibility of a chaotic breech of nature, has become sustainable development. The contradictions of private property have become a legal challenge and bio-genetics has developed into an ethical, or even scientific, struggle. For Žižek these three elements are part of the battle for the commons.

Here Žižek follows HN in suggesting that the commons – particularly in the postmodern articulation of the commons in immaterial labour and knowledge – are increasingly being enclosed and privatised. In relation to these specific antagonisms, environmentalism equates to the commons of external nature, intellectual property to the commons of culture and bio-technology to the commons of internal nature. Whilst this enclosure and exploitation of what is common to all evokes the necessary use of communism, it is only the fourth symptom, that of exclusion, which adds the dimension of universality and the consequent possibility of communist ‘democracy’.

For Žižek, universality and democracy are intimately intertwined, abet with a characteristic twist. The excluded stand for universality preciously because they are excluded; they are the part with no part, the element whose exclusion constitutes the order. Žižek labels this contradiction the instantiation of the impossibility of class struggle. That exclusion of the unruly masses with no official place in the private capitalist order – in relation to the order which produces the exclusion – gives place to the universality of Empire. The universal is not the failed attempt of any given set to constitute itself, but rather the set and its failure constitute the domain of universality.

Žižek links this form of universality to democracy in the Greek sense to signify the intrusion of the excluded into the socio-political space. Here Greek democracy contrasts strongly with Western-style liberal democracy. Liberal democracy seeks to include, but only that which is already symbolised within the current order. That is, liberal democracy is already formed on the basis of the exclusion of class struggle, the main instantiation of which is the masses of urban slums that act as the reserve army of labour for capitalism. By contrast, the Grecian form of democracy is based upon the inclusion of this group – the part with no part in the established order – into the demos. Such a move cannot be established by the demos themselves but rather must come from the internal destabilisation of the order. Thus democracy is universal in the sense that it includes that which is outside of itself, yet necessary for its own constitution.

Thus what is vital for both universality and democracy is not exclusion per se, but rather the interaction or gap between the excluded and the established order. The universal may be embodied by the excluded, but universality occurs through the inclusion of the excluded element. Žižek labels this approach a parallax view, where two incommensurable positions are held together. Thus, in Žižek’s communist democracy there is no specific revolutionary agent. Rather the revolutionary potential occurs in the short circuit between the order and its exclusion. The figure of the excluded confronts us – in its universal status – with the truth of its own position. Such a parallax juxtaposition –whereby both (incommensurable) sides are held together in the same frame – makes communist democracy a comedic system in more than just an ironic sense, following Zupancic’s logic of comedy/love, to which I shall soon turn my attention[SB6] .

Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Žižek, S. (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Verso: London.

Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Žižek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. Verso: London.

Žižek, S. (2000a). Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, Please! In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality; Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (pp. 90-135). London: Verso.

Žižek, S. (2000b). Da Capo senza Fine. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Univerisality; Contemporary Dialogues of the Left. London: Verso

Žižek, S. (2000c). Holding the Place. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Žižek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London: Verso.

Žižek, S. (2002). For They Know Not What They Do (2nd ed.). London: Verso.

Žižek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Žižek, S. (2008). In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso.

[MU1]Reference

[MU2]Reference and expand from text - vital section in regards to finance capital and money/currency and the end of general equivalence as a guarantee. Perhaps reference back to Harvey. Explain the link between postmodernity and the lack of a general equivalent

[C3]Has the formula of capitalism altered, or was the postmodern tendency always evident?

[MU4]Reference to Davis from previous work

[MU5]Reference

[SB6]I need to expand upon finance capital, the feminine, the relationship between class struggle and the excluded and how the 2^nd Zizekian perspective builds on the first; in particular how class struggle relates to capital as the Real. Thus far the argument follows a symbolic (real), imaginary, real structure and I need to reflect on the relationship between the latter and the former

The Communist Hypothesis

2009-03-20T14:19:00.001+13:00

The Communist hypothesis and comedic democracy

Western Marxism has been dominated by the search to explain why Marx’s revolutionary agent, the proletariat, has allowed the continued expansion of capitalism. Without the political security of the inevitable revolutionary implosion, the radical left has undertaken a search for a new ‘communist idol’ in the place of the next revolutionary subject or ideological position. Zizek has rejected this continual search, stating that we are already in possession of such a revolutionary possibility; the communist hypothesis. Or, following the Hopi tribal maxim that he quotes, ‘We are the ones we have been waiting for’.

The communist idea does not come from an idealic outside position, untouched by the vampirish claws of capital. Rather it comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, particularly the capitalist instantion of the impossible class relationship. As such, the communist hypothesis arrives without determinate content. Its articulation is independent of previous articulations in the name of communism. What is to be done is yet to be articulated, but does not have to come from outside of ourselves. The answer lies within the contradictions of capitalism. It is not located with a specific agent or missing ideological narrative but comes rather through our own implication – as practioners rather than believers – in the contradictions of capitalism.

For Zizek, this revolutionary potential comes from our universal implication in the contradictions of capitalism. Revolution comes not from a specific subject such as the proletariat, but because in capitalism we are all proletarians. Nonetheless, despite hinting at the shape the communist hypothesis might take, Zizek limits his analysis to the end of capitalism. Within this analysis, however, lie the seeds of a fundamentally different form of political economy. This form is based upon a comedic articulation of the communist hypothesis in what can be deemed communist democracy.

The Communist Hypothesis

The communist hypothesis is neither an ideal, a semblance or presence to come in a deconstructive sense, nor has it any necessary relation to previous communist instantiations which focused on either property or the state. Rather it is the task of dedicated anti-capitalists and the focus of this thesis to consider the manner in which it must be articulated in today’s conditions.

Thus the communist hypothesis cannot be a transcendental idea. Rather it arises as the only radical response to the contradictions of global capital. Western Marxism, beginning with the Frankfurt school has become increasingly critical towards the Hegelian-Marxist notion of determinate negation, by which any new form of society emerges from the contradictions immanent to the current order. Instead, Marxism and other forms of Radical Leftism have adopted a utopia longing for an order which is wholly Other; an order which develops from an unmediated outside.

Zizek’s notion of the communist hypothesis is strictly opposed to any notion of an outside to capitalism. Rather Zizek rehabilitates the Hegelian determinate negation in his theory of universality. Under this theory the concrete universal – that which is excluded from the ‘private’ order, yet exceeds its boundaries and remains immanent to the totality – stands directly for universality through determinate negation. Thus the communist hypothesis comes as a response to the immanent contradictions of capitalism, not from a mythically unspoiled outside.

Zizek argues that these contradictions are embodied in four antagonisms which threaten capitalism; the possibility of ecological collapse, the contradictions between immaterial labour, intellectual property and private property, the development of new scientific technologies which are changing the nature of life in its barest form and the new forms of exclusion, which Zizek labels new forms of apartheid. This exclusion is most notable in the rapidly expanding slums of the third world, but increasingly an underclass is developing within the western world itself. This group acts as reserve or surplus labour, the existance of which maintains the status of labour as a commodity and the capitalistic class relations. The radical potential of this group is not their poverty as such – horrific as it is – but rather the walls and divisions used to exclude them from the rest of society.

The first approach, broadly conceived as conservative or neo-liberal, depending upon location, is the more pragmatic. Under neo-liberal ideology, the capitalist system is considered far from perfect, yet is regarded as not only historically the most effective system, but also the most beneficial system possible. In its most strongly ideological narrative, this approach contends that capitalism is simply a reflection of human nature and no more perfectible. Capitalism will operate in sporadic cycles and will be unjust to some degree. This may seem complacently benign when it comes to the fluctuating price of cheese, but becomes more brutal in regards to naked ambition for limited global resources. It is one thing to justify inflation, quite another to consider the prospect of an outright Oil war between the United States and China. It is also a perspective much more likely to be backed by those on the positive side of capitalistic justice.

The other, more liberal, option can be deemed ‘eco-capitalism’. This approach, characterized by the work of Jeffery Sachs and the official benevolence of the United Nations, argues that the productivity of capitalism can be utilized for the good of humanity, whether it is dealing with the ecological crisis, ending poverty or becoming more tolerant towards the Other. In particular the language of its politico-ideological supplement, liberal democracy is used to pacify the brutality of capitalism.

The communist hypothesis does not emerge from outside of this history, but rather upon the basis of the exclusion around which capital is founded. Under Zizek’s construction of the four dominant symptoms of capitalism, there is one symptom that defines the group; poverty, or rather the exclusion of those in poverty. The other three contradictions have been able to be included within the limits of capitalism. Environmentalism, despite the apparent radical possibility of a chaotic breech of nature, has become sustainable development. The contradictions of private property have become a legal challenge and bio-genetics has developed into an ethical, or even scientific, struggle. For Zizek these three elements are part of the battle for the commons.

Here Zizek follows Hardt and Negri in suggesting that the commons – particularly in the postmodern articulation of the commons in immaterial labour and knowledge – are increasingly being enclosed and privatised. In relation to these specific antagonisms, environmentalism equates to the commons of external nature, intellectual property to the commons of culture and bio-technology to the commons of internal nature. Whilst this enclosure and exploitation of what is common to all evokes the necessary use of communism, it is only the fourth symptom, that of exclusion, which adds the dimension of universality and the consequent possibility of communist ‘democracy’.

For Zizek, universality and democracy are intimately intertwined, abet with a characteristic twist. The excluded stand for universality preciously because they are excluded; they are the part with no part, the element whose exclusion constitutes the order. That is, the capitalist empire – both as an ideological system and symbolic/Real logic – must produce an exclusion in order to constitute itself as a set. That exclusion, of the unruly masses with no official place in the private capitalist order, is what makes the totality of Empire universal. The universal is not the failed attempt of any given set to constitute itself, but rather the set and its failure constitute the domain of universality.

Zizek links this form of universality to democracy in the Greek sense to signify the intrusion of the excluded into the socio-political space. Here Greek democracy contrasts strongly with Western-style liberal democracy. Liberal democracy seeks to include, but only that which is already symbolised within the current order. That is, liberal democracy is already formed on the basis of the exclusion of class struggle, the main instantiation of which is the masses of urban slums that act as the reserve army of labour for capitalism. By contrast, the Grecian form of democracy is based upon the inclusion of this group – the part with no part in the established order – into the demos. Such a move cannot be established by the demos themselves but rather must come from the internal destabilisation of the order. Thus democracy is universal in the sense that it includes that which is outside of itself, yet necessary for its own constitution.

Thus what is vital for both universality and democracy is not exclusion per se, but rather the interaction or gap between the excluded and the established order. The universal may be embodied by the excluded, but universality occurs through the inclusion of the excluded element. Zizek labels this approach a parallax view, where two incommensurable positions are held together. Thus, in Zizek’s communist democracy there is no specific revolutionary agent. Rather the revolutionary potential occurs in the short circuit between the order and its exclusion. The figure of the excluded confronts us – in its universal status – with the truth of its own position. Such a parallax juxtaposition –whereby both (incommensurable) sides are held together in the same frame – makes communist democracy a comedic system in more than just an ironic sense, following Zupancic’s logic of comedy/love, to which I shall soon turn my attention.

The question becomes of the shape of the communist hypothesis - is it possible to materially reproduce shared social life based upon an expanded notion of universality or does this simply cement class relations – do we need an entirely new (feminine) version of the impossible universal and the communist hypothesis, one without privatisation?

Brief Thesis Update

2009-01-19T16:34:00.001+13:00

The core theoretical task of this thesis is a consideration of the possibilities for redeveloping a form of class relationship that avoids the current suffering of the hungry. Despite the immaterial face of Western capital, the limitations of this form of political economy are the most damaging in material form – in the hunger of the poor and the breakdown of our natural environmental. These symptoms are constitutive of the continued presence and expansion of capital. For this reason, any response to capitalism which intends to alter global economic conditions must move outside of the realm of capital and turn to theory. Although such a turn can be difficult, particularly in the face of the expansion of capitalist logic and structure into ‘critical; thought it remains vital. One discipline that has remained largely immune to the demands of capital is psychoanalysis. As a mode of critique, psychoanalysis is best able to avoid the twin dangers of postmodern particularism (which offers no threat to capital) and nostalgic essentialism in producing an analysis of capitalism. In particular, Lacanian psychoanalysis adds much to a Marxist critique of political economy. In doing so, however, this critique removes the foundations of the predominant Leftist responses to political economy and shared social life and instead insists on the constitutivity of both lack and excess.

The problem of the instantiation of a communal ethic continues to plague the political production of psychoanalysis, which thus far has provided no alternative to capital and certainly no modality of the material reproduction of shared social life which might meaningful reduce the material sufferings which result from the rule of the capitalist empire. Nonetheless, by considering Zizek’s theory of universality, in conjunction with a rehabilitation of class as the fundamental condition of (im)possibility for political economy, renewed possibilities emerge for the material reproduction of globally shared social life which avoid class exploitation, thus opening up the possibilities of a global economic matrix which does not require the material depravation of the masses, nor the ecological rape of the planet to continue to instantiate itself. Ultimately, I seek to propose a renewed dialectic of class impossibility, one that offers the possibility of the emancipation of the hungry, an emancipation that is the duty of our species. In doing so I hope to develop a language for the development of a critique of capitalism and establish the nodal points of a new frontier for political economy.

In Defence of the Hungry

2008-11-12T16:33:00.001+13:00

Every day 13,000 children under the age of five slowly perish from hunger or related biological deficits caused by extreme poverty (UNICEF, 2008). These children are largely part of the 880 million people at the bottom of the global ‘development ladder’ minimally existing on less than US$1.25 per day (World Bank, 2007). In 2008 the World Bank (2008) reported that global economic output reached an unprecedented US$143 Trillion, despite the beginnings of a global recession. The global population continues to expand at exponential rates, which – combined with continued economic growth – has placed unsustainable pressure upon planetary resources and supporting eco-systems. Already the affects of environmental degradation are falling disproportionally upon the poor. As a response to this suffering the United Nations developed a series of ‘Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs), the foremost of which specifically aimed to half the number of people living in extreme poverty. Other movements prompting similar goals, such the celebrity-backed ‘Make Poverty History’, ‘One’ and ‘Red’ campaigns have received significant international publicity. Yet, by the end of 2008 little, if any, progress has been made towards reducing poverty, although the MDGs and associated campaigns have made more significant gains in reducing the dislocating impact of poverty and climate change upon the collective Western psyche.

As a response to this traumatic global problematic, the impact of the MDGs upon the emotional well-being of the developed world has perhaps been underappreciated by the hungry of the world. Instead, their attention has largely been focused on the rapid increases of food prices on the global market, which have wiped out any progress that had been made towards reducing their suffering. The rise in food prices has been part of a larger trend towards the increase-demand for resource commodities, caused by the continued growth of western wealth and the unprecedented development of Brazil, India and in particular China. Whilst this development has moved millions out of poverty, it has subsequently increased the price of food – which has had an undue effect on the world’s hungry – and placed more strain on the planet’s already stretched climatic conditions and resource limits. In response to the apparent change in the world’s climate, and the demand on the most valued commodity, Oil, the Western world has sought to develop alternative energy sources. This move – turning basic food crops such as corn into alternative fuels – has resulted in a reduction in the supply of food and has become an equal partner in the increase in the price of food and the suffering of the hungry.

The interaction between bio-fuels and world food prices reflects a deeper, if silent, crisis occurring on this planet. Unrestrained material growth, along with historically exponential population growth, has placed unsustainable pressure on global resources and eco-systems. Yet, if excessive consumption is contaminating the planet, equally horrific is the suffering of a sizable population of the world who are plagued by chronic under-consumption. The contradiction is clear. The planet cannot tolerant the necessary economic growth required to bring the masses out of poverty, but an enlightened humanity cannot accept such poverty. Capitalism, the economic system which his produced this unprecedented economic growth and prosperity (for some) cannot provide solutions to this contradiction. Rather capitalism itself is split between a requirement for continual growth and the maintenance of a system of inequality which produces the hungry, excluded, workers of the world. Under capitalism, there appears little hope neither for the hungry of the modern world, nor for planet Earth itself. Moreover, despite the current financial crisis, there exists no feasible alternative to capitalist political economy. Understood in this manner the situation cannot appear anything other than tragic.

This thesis, at its heart, is about responding to this problematic in terms of the plight of the world’s hungry.

This thesis first seeks to define the problem in terms of the structuration of capitalist political economy which causes, maintains and reproduces the dynamic contradiction between poverty and environmental unsustainability. It shall be argued that these problems are not contingent aberrations, but rather structural necessities for the continued reproduction of the capitalist mode of economy. Despite the contradictions within capitalism, there currently appears to be little prospect of the collapse of capitalism and, more importantly, no feasible alternative to the capitalist mode of political economy. Furthermore, capitalism has become so pervasive – both in terms of economy and ideology – that the space for thinking political economy outside of the epistemological limits of capitalism is rapidly shrinking.

In reply, this thesis passionately calls for a return to theory, a return to thinking outside of the limits of power, not simply to restrain that power, but to actively re-engage with societal problems – in this case, the failure of capitalist political economy. The hungry exist not because a lack of resources or a lack of compassion, but rather because the interactions between the limitations of our understanding of capitalism and the ideological structuring of the capitalist empire.

Symptomatic here is the work of Jeffery Sachs. Sachs, the director of the ‘Earth Institute’ at Colombia University in New York, is perhaps the most prominent contemporary public scholar on poverty, a position established by his seminal work The End of Poverty (2005). Sach’s most recent work Common Wealth (2008) considers the interactions between poverty and environmental limitations. In doing so, Sach’s constructs much the same problematic as this thesis; the world is facing both an environmental catastrophe and massive poverty, problems to be compounded by continued economic and population growth. Sachs, however, asserts that these problems can be solved with political will and minor alterations of capitalism.

This assertion is naturally contrary to the argumentation in this thesis. More interesting however, is Sachs symptomatic lack of consideration of the problematic outside of the limitations of capitalist ideology. Two points stand out here, both in the preface to Common Wealth. Firstly, Sachs asserts that our social philosophies always lag behind the scientific representation of the world, a category in which Sachs places his work. He then lists the broad categories of scholars working at the Earth Institute – none of which include social scientists, let alone theorists or ‘social philosophies’.

Sach’s blindness is part of a larger trend, the scientific hegemony of global problem solving. Science itself has a role to play in both the reduction of poverty and in managing environment change, but it does not consider the structuration of its own understanding. This has led to a situation where the status of global politics is considered as either moral or scientific, never human. Both social theory and politics are foreclosed from the debate – with the result that not only do we not look outside of current understanding for solutions, but human behaviour is implicitly considered to be fundamentally malleable. However, as Terry Eagleton has asserted, mountains has proved much easier to move that the structures of social life.

In response, I turn to Lacanian psychoanalysis as a form of radical theory capable of both revealing the structure and limitations of our current modality of shared social life, but also the possibilities for restructuring those limitations. Lacan’s work has inspired multiple interpretations and much controversy. In this thesis the central theoretical orientation is provided by Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Lacan.

Zizek’s work provides an exciting, insightful and powerful methodology for the critique of capitalism. Yet, neither Zizek nor the (fractured) community of post-Lacanian theorists have been able to generate a hegemonic political frontier that imagines a new form of shared social life. More importantly, Lacanian theory has been constitutively unable to consider the possibilities for the material reproduction of that shared social life, although Zizek’s reading of Marxism and class struggle shall be heavily relied upon. Moreover, in this thesis I contend that such a production of both shared social life and its material reproduction exceed psychoanalytic theory. Thus, although this thesis is informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis, ultimately to engage with political economy the Lacanian horizon must be extended by a consideration of the excessive materiality of the (impossibilities) of the economic.

Considering the Hungry

Feeding the hungry is at the same time an incredibly simple but increasing complex task. Our world has both the knowledge of the existence of hunger, and more importantly the resources, to be able respond to the problem. Feeding the hungry, is not, however, a matter of political will, as Jeffery Sachs (2008: 4) suggests. Such an argument only mediates against the dislocating affect of poverty. The more disturbing conclusion, perhaps unpalpably so, is that within our capitalist mode of economy, we simply have no solution to suffering of the hungry. More than that, in the face of our complicity, the capitalist system actively maintains this situation. Simply put, in order for capitalism to function, a certain percentage of the world’s population must remain hungry and die for a cause in which, officially they have no place. They are the constitutive exception of capitalism – necessary, yet disavowed or foreclosed from the developed eye.

The argumentation here, as I shall develop in this thesis, is complex and differentiated. It is not my purpose to prescriptively represent and map the operation of either capitalism or extreme poverty. There is no doubt that poverty is impacted by a multitude of causes. Nor should we doubt that the particular (trans-capitalist) aid measures which address some of those causes – say, reducing the spread of AIDS, or immunising against Malaria – would reduce the effects of poverty and the suffering of those in poverty. Limiting our approach to these gradual measures which act only to maintain the system risks a situation where individuals who are otherwise capitalist tyrants, like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, become the word’s greatest humanitarians (Zizek, 2008: 430). None of these measures are able to link hunger and suffering with the global economy and as such is not able to interact with its fundamental cause – capitalist political economy.

Nonetheless, one should not jump to the vulgar conclusion that exclusion, suffering and hunger are active created by capitalist subjectivity, that some mysterious conspiring agents are secretly maintaining this situation in the name of Capital[ii]. Rather, the situation is much more complex and subsequently more horrific. Extreme poverty is not the consequence of a contingent aberration in the system, soon to be eliminated by economic progress or the enlightenment of the masses. Nor are some sinister agents of power responsible, such that a mere act of political will can rectify the situation. Instead, I contend that this extreme and absolute poverty is the systematic result of our mediocre day-to-day economic interactions and pleasures. That is, for the capitalist system to remain functional, providing the wealth available in the western world, extreme poverty, hunger and death occur on a horrific scale as the necessary consequence of capitalist subjectivity.

Consequently any discourse which seeks to intervene in the suffering of the hungry cannot do so within the epistemological limits of capitalism. Instead, we must develop a new space for our globally shared social life, or rather the material reproduction of that life. This new economic space must avoid both the exceptionality and the exclusion of both the masses and the even more marginalised hungry. In our current circumstances, however, such an alternative form of economy is not on the horizon. Capitalism has become so pervasive that both conservatives and many radicals have come to support Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis. While conservatives celebrate the victory of liberal-democratic (capitalism), for radicals such a resignation is tinged with more than a hint of tragedy. Meanwhile, although any alternative to capitalism is likely to be in the socialist, or at least Marxist, tradition, the existence of actually existing socialism provides little in the way of inspiration, but much in the way of melancholy and nostalgia.

Instead, given the lack of alternatives, this thesis turns to theory to consider both our current understanding of political economy and the conditions of possibility for the material reproduction of shared social life. In particular, this thesis is informed by post-Lacanian psychoanalysis and the work of Slavoj Žižek. Žižek’s work on universality (the understanding and discursive reproduction of social life) suggests that any universal, or utopian, position is ultimately impossible. Instead, universality is characterised by the dialectical operation of lack and excess, such that any universal identification is constituted upon the existence of an exception. In terms of political economy, Žižek labels this impossibility class struggle.

Post-Lacanian psychoanalytic discourse offers several ethico-political alternatives. These range from the ‘democratic enjoyment’ of Yannis Stavrakakis’ (following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe) conception of radical democracy, Laclau’s subsequent move to populism, Alenka Zupancic’s work on the concrete universal in relation to love and comedy, as well as Ceren Ozselcuk and Yahya Madra’s focus on feminine structure and class struggle. Additionally, Žižek – certainly the most prominent post-Lacanian figure – has articulated a number of political positions, from an initial support of radical democracy to calls to traverse the fantasy, move to the Lacanian Act or practice the concrete universal. The latest instantiation of his work calls for the development of a ‘subtractive politics’.

Conversely, these alternatives have generally been focused on the political, rather than the politically economic. Nonetheless, a limited range of psychoanalytic critiques of the economy have been developed. A wide-ranging discursive frontier, characterised by the work of Stavrakakis, Todd McGowan and Jason Glynos, has emerged which considers relations of enjoyment and consumption, but pays little attention to production or class relations. Alternatively, Žižek, following Fredric Jameson, has sought to develop a new dialogue between Marxism and psychoanalysis. However, whilst this ‘psycho-Marxism’ has produced a telling critique of capitalism – one that shall be heavily relied on in this thesis – it has not been able to consider an alternative to capitalism. Indeed Žižek considers that no outside exists within or beyond capitalism under which space for the development of an alternative exists.

Žižek shares this perspective with Jameson, who understands history as capitalism’s gradual realisation that it does not exist. No doubt Jameson would consider the current financial crisis as an example of that realisation and the coming apocalypse. In this sense Jameson is a revolutionary in the same manner as Jesus Christ. Both perceived the requirement for revolutionary transformation, but neither saw the need for revolutionary action. Instead the revolution would take care of itself (Eagleton, 2007: xx-xxi). So far, despite movements in the right direction, both have been proven spectacularly wrong.

Our fundamental impotence in waiting for the downfall of capitalism is a position disputed by Madra and Ozselcuk. Working with the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) out of the University of Massachusetts, these authors have sought to use Lacanian theory to consider the possibilities for restructuring class struggle and a post-fantasmatic sense of the economy. Although such work is still in its infancy, a frontier has developed which seeks to orientate class relationships in terms of the Lacanian logic of the feminine.

In this thesis I shall argue that Madra and Ozselcuk have made the correct move in attempting to consider the conditions of possibility for political economy outside of capitalism. Whilst Žižek’s analysis of capitalism provides powerful insight, his work offers little hope for the hungry. Instead, this thesis seeks to follow the AESA discourse of new relations of class impossibility. This discourse, however, is rather underdeveloped in regard to Lacanian theory. In that regard, the goal of this thesis is to consider the progressive possibilities for instantiating the impossibility of class relationships in terms of ethic constructions of universality and exception and the material reproduction of shared social life in the name of world’s suffering hungry.

Here I take reference from Terry Eagleton, whose ‘cheerful’ work stands in stark contrast to the tragic resignation of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. Eagleton’s work is largely orientated by the Marxist tradition, but displays much sympathy for psychoanalytic thought. More useful for this thesis, however, is Eagleton’s consideration of the body as an ethical object at the heart of the human condition. Such a consideration allows for an enlarged understanding of the consequences of political economy beyond the standard anti-capitalism critique. Additionally, Eagleton has increasingly focused on the comedic side of love (this he shares with Alenka Zupancic) which suggests the prospect of a progressive consideration of exclusion (in this case the hungry) and the possibility of hope.

[i] Although, in the Western world more attention has been focused on the strain on Western budgets than the plight of the hungry

[ii] As I shall expand upon later, the ‘agents’ of capitalism are actively involved in the generation and maintenance of poverty at some levels. Of most interest are the historical forces of colonisation, which has created massive inequalities and labour-vulenerabilities exploited by capital, as well as the soft-colonisation of the IMF and World Bank. These ‘Bretton Woods’ have expanded capitalist relations throughout the global economy, expanding inequalities in the name of wealth creation. Additionally, Naomi Klein (2007) has identified a new dynamic by which western companies are actively creating or promoting disasters such as the Iraqi war.

Reply to ‘Lenin’s Ghost’

2008-08-15T16:25:00.000+12:00

Thanks for getting in touch , it is always great to hear from fellow bloggers/scholars. I am currently half-way through my PhD. Programme, having finished my MA Thesis in 2006. In regards to the environment, I would agree that it is one of the most pressing issues for humanity and the intellectual community at large. The problem, I believe is that the issues have been hegemonised by the natural sciences, which holds that the problems, or at least solutions, are technological rather than aspects of human behaviour. The failure of theorists of human behaviour to critically consider environmental signals a much larger issue in regards to the status of environmental problems within capitalism.

Some years ago I had some hope that the discursive dislocations caused by environmental awareness would not only be wholly taken on by western society, but would also consequentially change the very contours of capitalist political economy. Now, however, embolden by the breakdown of my naivety, I have a firm belief that radical global environmental degradation will continue unabated under global capitalism, whatever form the latter takes. I hold this view for these reasons;

- The power of the empty signifier ‘sustainable development’ to take on the demands of the various threats to the system. Such is the flexibility and power of this signifier that it can be taken on to mean anything from energy efficiency, community economic programmes to sustainability increasing profits
- The ability of the capitalist system to turn threats into opportunities for further profit; witness the burgeoning ‘Green market’
- Ultimately there are two complementary demands behind these processes. The first is capitalism’s structural requirement to increase rates of profit. At the most essential level this can only mean increases in the levels of production and resource consumption. Equally, the primary structuration of the capitalist subject is one of commodity fetishism, or at least enjoyment of the consumption of commodities (whether this is a fetish is open for debate). These two complementary structures within the capitalist system forbid the thinking of environmentalism outside of the demands of capitalist political economy. By far the most obvious solution to environment problems is the reduction is levels of consumption. This, however, is an idea which is simply unable to be thought through fully. At some level Green political movements and the alike argue for a reduction in levels of consumption, but the consequences of this demand are not taken to the end. Under capitalism, a reduction in consumption levels can only result in recession, with the fall out disproportionally affecting the poor at both a local and global level.
- This brings me to my final reason: Capitalism thrives both by producing new commodities, but also by bringing them into new markets. That capitalism is thriving in the ‘developing world’, in particular India and China is a triumph in terms of bringing large sections of the population out of poverty, but in the long term can only be a tragedy; if the world is currently struggling to hold onto the resource demands of the western world, it cannot possibly support the same levels of consumption for India and China, nor can it allow for others to come out of poverty.

Thus, the capitalist system actually requires the presence of poverty at two levels; a reserve army of labour which maintains the integrity of the capitalist wage system (which I will not enter into here) and in terms of global resource consumption. In the medium to long term, if capitalism continues I can only forecast ongoing and increasingly desperate resource-based conflict, beyond that of currently seen for Oil, at both a base and ideological level.

Given these conclusions, then, it is little wonder that environmentalism cannot be thought outside of capitalist terms, given the radical consequences of this thought. Consequently, one cannot be surprised by the grip that market solutions have on both politicians and the population at large. They are, quite literally the only solution available under capitalism. And, to be fair, there is good to be seen in these solutions; both strictly market solutions like carbon trading or intra-capitalist technological developments such as energy efficient light-bulbs. At a certain level, they do bring about environmental improvements. The other side of the equation, the under-side which is of primary interest to those involved with psychoanalysis, is that these devices not only serve only to reinforce the capitalist logic of consumption, but their primary (if unconscious) purpose is to mediate against the dislocation of capitalist ideology by environmentalism.

That is why I agree with Zizek’s latest work on ecology (and I see this article on your blog). Here Zizek argues that environmentalism has lost all of its subversive sting (if it ever had any) and that it is only the divide between those included and those excluded from the system that can bring at decisive change to capitalism.

This is why, in regards to your enquiry on Zizek’s work on revolution, I have some solidarity with his idea that in these times we actually have no leg to stand on; all political attempts to rearticulate political economy can only end up being capitalist (as we see with most ‘Green’ political parties around the world – their policies may have an anti-capitalist edge, but they are quite happy to participate in capitalist democracy) or being pathetically ineffective, living in the past or not having any grip on political discourse. For this reason, under these conditions, Zizek argues that the thing to do is actually nothing – to resist the terms of the debate and to continually reveal the limits of the ideological matrix under which those terms are set. In these times, I see more value in this position than ‘revolution’, which operates as yet another fantasy position; all action is useless until the revolution. Holding to the goal of revolution, then, both prevents practical action whilst subduing the effects of the real within the current order.

Doing ‘nothing’ is a difficult position to hold. Not only does it appear to not offer any prospect of political change (and there is always some truth in appearance), but this strategy also does not allow any the holder any defence against the symptoms of the hegemonic horizon. And this is the great strength of the position – it forces us to both think outside of the square and take responsibility for those actions, there is by definition no support within the current order.

In this way it has some similarities to the Lacanian/Zizekian Act, which as you may be aware, is perhaps the most controversial part of Zizek’s work. I certainly agree with your concerns, although I can see the logic in Zizek’s argument. If capitalism has hegemonised hegemony, as he has put it, the only option is an Act(ion) that is outside of those co-ordinates. Certainly Zizek would argue against any notion that the consequences of an Act can be predicted or controlled. If we can name in advance the purpose or consequences of an Act, it is no longer an Act because it has support from the existing symbolic order. Politically and psychologically, the purpose of an Act is a radical break with the existing in which the subject takes total responsibility for the consequences.

I have never been comfortable with Zizek’s confluence of the Act with revolution, or indeed anti-capitalist politics. No doubt he would accuse me of being a liberal who wants ‘revolution without revolution’, but so be it. Nor have I supported the imperative of change for the sake of change, nor the imperative for contingency (as supported by Ernesto Laclau, both collaborator and enemy of Zizek, who has previously argued that the free society is one that is aware of the contingency of its formation) for the sake of contingency.

Where this leaves us in terms of political action, I am not sure, and this is the primary focus of my doctorate. I also find the question difficult in terms of my personal lifestyle. Despite my radical theoretical commitments, I find myself limited to typical moderate-liberal action; recycling, energy efficiency etc. And these things are fine on their own, provided they do not end up in a fantasy position of subduing environmental demand. Additionally, of course, I reduce my consumption as much as possible, although on a student budget this is a practical necessity as much as anything!

Increasingly I have been attracted by the arguments of Yahya Madra and Ceren Ozselcuk, writing out of the Rethinking Marxism journal (see my last couple of posts for a summary of their work) as an example of practical, positive (not positivising) action. Here they argue for the creation of a new space for political economy that does not enter into the logic of capitalism.

Essentially, I do think we have a responsibility to the shape of the future beyond the simple demand for change. If we are faced with a destructive form of political economy, our only alternative is for a form of political economy better suited to the dignity of the human condition. To me, hoping to destroy capitalism without any progressive purpose is hopelessly blind, whatever the theoretical calculations. Our responsibility than, is both to construct a new form and practice of political economy beyond capitalism and the ideological fantasy of communism. What shape this takes, I believe is currently an open question. Perhaps more importantly are the possibilities of breaking free from capitalism. Again, this remains an open question, with notably dimmer prospects.

Ultimately, in regards to environmentalism, I believe that the challenge for the intellectual and political community is twofold. The first step is to realise that this is human problem, caused by human behaviour and it is this behaviour which needs to alter, not to be supplemented by improved natural science. Once environmentalism becomes a problem for the humanities a further step needs to be taken in recognising that for the planet to resume flourishing, we cannot simply change behaviour within the system, but must change the system itself. How that change can come about, and in what form, is the challenge for the humanities.

Update, August 2008

2008-08-12T13:36:00.000+12:00

The majority of my time since the last update has been spent writing an essay considering the relationship between class and capitalism in terms of the interaction between Marxist and psychoanalytic theory. I plan, taking into account several re-writes, that the content of this essay will make up the majority of the first major section of the thesis, originally planned to be ‘What is Capitalism?’. The move to class signalled a change in perspective; rather than attempting to represent or map capitalism, class is instead that which prevents capitalism from being, and the subsequent relations which result from this impossibility. Such a perspective is much more compatible with the epistemological assumptions of psychoanalytic research.

The essay was divided into three sections[i];
- A theoretical history of class after Marx
- Contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives on class
- A theory of the operation of class within contemporary capitalism

The first section proved straightforward, little more than a history lesson, although the narrative was specifically constructed to produce the context for the argumentation to follow. This research did allow me to understand the context for the issues I was considering, but will prove more useful for the introductory stages of the thesis.

The second section was the most troublesome. Here I was inspired by the conference I attended in LA, which was my first exposure to work which specifically focused on psychoanalysis and the economy. Much of this work is limited in its understanding of psychoanalysis and has not been much exposed to psychoanalytic critique, but I believe that it has allowed me to bring my work forward, particularly around class struggle.

In terms of psychoanalysis and class, I have constructed this debate as divided between two positions; Zizek and Yahya Madra/Ceren Ozselcuk[ii] from the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) group[iii]. The division rests upon an understanding of Lacan's maxim 'There is no sexual relationship'. Both consider that this maxim can be equally applied to class – ‘There is no class relationship’ – but differ in their interpretation of the statement.
For Madra and Ozselcuk, class exists – it is a process which involves the process of producing, distributing and appropriating surplus[iv] - but class relationships are impossible because there is no meta-language which would allow for a neutral approach to the class process. Nonetheless, class relationships do occur, based upon an ideological illusion which mitigates and includes the failure which haunts class, they just always fail. That is, capitalist class relationships are based upon a masculine logic whereby the formation of class relationships is reliant upon an exception[v]. This exception, like Freud’s primordial father from Totem and Taboo, operates at the top of the chain, not at the bottom, and is included within the symbolic matrix of ideology.

Madra and Ozselcuk include both capitalism and communism in this category – an ideological fantasy, based upon an exception element that is notionally outside of the class process yet controls its conditions of possibility. Within capitalism, this exception is the Board of Directors – the only entity within the capitalist enterprise, who does not contribute to, and battles for, control of surplus and the class process[vi]. Only the directors enjoy other people’s surplus without giving anything in return.

I have two problems with this argument. Firstly, within the logic of this argument, I believe that the location of the exception is misplaced. Rather than the Board of Directors (who supply strategic direction) I would argue that it is the shareholders who provide nothing but the conditions of possibility for the capitalist enterprise. My second objection is to the use of an ‘upper’ exception. If you can excuse the limitations of a spatial model, my previous understanding of non-identity had come either in the form of a ‘horizontal’ constitute outside or a ‘lower’ concrete universal. The former referring to the limitations which form the basis of a discourse, say Islam to Christianity, the latter to the exclusion which forms the discourse, third world poverty to first world wealth. Instead, I define the status of the Board of Directors/shareholders as that of a nodal point, or perhaps empty signifier. Whilst they provide a point of difference within the discourse (or rather the very instantiation of difference) this exception is very well accepted from within the discourse; the exception is not excluded from the horizon itself.

In my reading of sexuation, however, I have found that this is in the predominant understanding of exception within a masculine logic. My previous understanding of exception – that of the part with no part – is better understand as an exclusion from the field of understanding. For this reason, and for reasons I shall further elaborate once I move on to Zizek’s work, I decided that I needed to step away from my class essay and gather a greater understanding of sexuation, upon which the difference between Zizek and Madra/Ozselcuk rests. In particular I need to further develop my understanding of sexuation in relation to universality, which is at the forefront of my theoretical understanding. Of special interest is the relationship between sexuation and the concrete universal, the predominant usage of which appears to vary greatly from my present understanding.

At this stage of my research, it appears that differing understandings of sexual difference, in relation to class, is the central division, both theoretical and political, between Madra/ Ozselcuk and Zizek. This division is encapsulated in their differing readings of the maxim ‘there is no sexual/class relationship’. As I noted, for Madra/Ozselcuk, within capitalism class exists relationships do exist, but they always fail. This failure occurs within what they believe to be the hegemony of masculine logic in capitalist class relationships. Against this, Madra and Ozselcuk argue that we need a feminine logic of class, one which breaks with any fantasmatic blockage of the impossibility of class and institutes this impossibility as its founding moment. Under such a feminine logic no one entity would have exclusive rights to surplus, thus breaking with current and conventional understandings of both capitalism and communism. Thus class relationships would still be impossible, but under the feminine construction of this impossibility non-exploitative class relationships are possible. The (non) relationship would be non-exploitative because no entity has exclusive rights to surplus, in contrast to the constitutive exception of masculine class relationships[vii].

It is difficult to reconcile Madra and Ozselcuk’s understanding of non-exploitative class processes with Zizek’s conception of class, even though both start from the same moment in Lacan’s work. There is a certain structural similarity between Madra/Ozselcuk and Zizek, with the former citing Zizek as sharing the usage of the maxim ‘there is no class relationship’ and in considering class as a modality of the real[viii]. At times Zizek’s work on class does resemble Madra and Ozselcuk. He does contend that class struggle is the Real, an impossibility that cannot be instituted within capitalist ideology. Zizek’s main point is that class is the exclusion which founds the capitalist horizon, a determining cause by its very absence that inspires an infinite plurality of discursive responses, which could be read in defence of Madra and Ozselcuk’s understanding of class impossibility Although the latter do not consider this point specifically, it is commensurable within their research.

Where they differ is on sexuation. Although at times Zizek’s implicit[ix] class critiques appear to consider capitalist class relations to conform to a masculine logic, Zizek main contention is that class is already a feminine concept. The impossibility of the class relationship relates to the impossibility of any meta-language within which to discuss class because class is its own exception. If class is the exclusion which founds the symbolic order (under capitalism) than it acts as the exception for all other discourses – class is the exception that allows for our conception of race, democracy and shoe fetishes. It is this exception (making the discourse masculine) which allows for the formation of the concepts of race, democracy and indeed shoe fetishism. But class is also its own exception. For this reason, Zizek argues that class is a feminine non-all – it does not receive the same exceptional guarantee of other discourses. In this sense class ‘does not exist’.

I have always considered that statements such that ‘x doesn’t exist’ are typical Lacanian exaggerations. It is not that something doesn’t exist, it is only that it is lacking. For example ‘the Other doesn’t exist’. If we consider the other to be the symbolic order, then clearly it does exist, but not in complete form. It is like stating the one’s stamp collection does not exist because it does not contain ever possible stamp. From this perspective ‘does not exist’ can be read as ‘is incomplete’. Recently, however, I have begun to reconsider my opinion based on a different kind of reading. This reading is based on Lacan’s notion of ex-istance. As I understand it, ex-stance means that it is not so much that the object doesn’t exist in the sense that it is not there, but that the image of the concept it all its fullness does not exist. That class does not exist is not the same thing as ‘there is no such thing as ghosts’. Rather it states that the universal concept of class does not exist, no matter what particular attempts are made to fill it. In the masculine sense, object relationships are lacking because attempts are made to instantiate a particular to fill the universal

This is Zizek’s understanding of ‘there is no class relationship’. Because class is non-all, it is an impossible object that is beyond definition. One cannot research class in the same way as race or democracy. Instead, researchers can only consider the affects of class, in much the same way as they might consider the affects of the real or black holes.

An understanding of the presence of absence, or effect without (visible) cause is at the core of psychoanalysis. I am confused, however, with the implicitly distinction Zizek makes between class and the real. Class struggle, Zizek regularly reminds us, is a modality of the real. The real, however, is able to be symbolically defined. The analyst is able to understand the effects of the real and represent these effects into a formal concept of the real. The concept of the real does not extinguish the real, but it does give important insight into its affects.

Madra and Ozselcuk use a similar formal definition of class processes as an impossibility, but an impossibility that can be represented formally in its affects. Considering this gap between definitions of the real and Zizek’s reluctance to define class, which we have to assume is deliberate, we have to wonder what the difference is between the real and class as a modality of the real. If class is feminine, is the real also feminine, or is the real between the point, or rather the point itself, in terms of sexuation?

Perhaps I should expand upon my current knowledge of sexuation. As I understand it, the masculine and feminine are two different attempt at universalising the concept, both of which fails. Put another way, the masculine and feminine are two different attempts to symbolise the real. Where the masculine attempts to construct itself as all – everything is within the set, except the one that is not – the feminine is always non-all – there is nothing which cannot be included within the set. The point of failure for the masculine is the exception, for the feminine it is the inability of the set to finalise itself.

We see this in Kant’s ‘mathematical antinomy’ here Kant offers two equally valid perspectives on the universe; the universe is finite and the universe is infinite. The former, which attempts to close off the universe (in doing so producing an exception) is the masculine, whereas ‘the universe is infinite’ is the feminine non-all. The psychoanalytic point is that the symbolic is naturally non-all – it cannot be closed as a set (the focus on the incompleteness of the symbolic order has led to suggestions that Lacan is a post-structuralist) but the masculine subject through either ideological fantasy or the fundamental fantasy, depending on one’s perspective, prefers the illusion of completeness.

What these perspectives are then, is different responses to the Real. The Real of sexual difference however does not operate within the logics, but rather between them. Similar to Zizek’s work on the ‘Parallax Real’ the masculine and feminine logics are simply incommensurable; there is no possibility of translating between them. That is, any construction of sexual difference can only be caught up in sexual difference itself; there is no meta-language for mediating between them. Thus, Zizek’s sexual difference is not of the variety ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, which implies that men and women have different symbolic universes. Zizek point is more radical than this; sexual difference means that not only are the masculine and feminine different configurations of the symbolic order, there is no point of translation between the two. There is no meta-language; sexual difference is that meta-language.

According to Zizek, the Real of sexual difference corresponds to the Real of class struggle. There is no way to mediate class struggle; class struggle is its own mediation. Just as one can consider the structure of responses to sexual difference – witness Zizek’s work on the masculine and feminine – one can consider actually existing class structures. Class struggle itself, however, cannot be considered as an object of research because it is its own exception – any attempt to define class struggle will come up against class struggle itself. In this sense class struggle and sexual difference are modalities of the Real, a kind of zero-level concept.

Of course, as with Zizek’s conceptions of the Real, the Real is not simply an a priori concept in the traditional sense of a positive determining factor. Rather it is the lack to which discourses respond. That is to say, class struggle is not ahistorical, but rather a historically contingent response to the Real. What Zizek is not clear on is whether class struggle exists only within a capitalist universe, or, as with Madra and Ozselcuk, class struggle is a fundamental impossibility in operation in all forms of economy. He is able to state that the central wager of Marxist theory is that class is the underlying antagonism of capitalism, but is not able to consider the conditions of possibility for class itself, unlike Marx who discussed in detail the possibilities of class relationships between feudalism, capitalism and communism.

To summarise the split between Madra/Ozselcuk and Zizek;
- Both consider there to be ‘no class relationship’ and class to be a modality of the real
- Madra and Ozselcuk define class as a formal process of the production, distribution and appropriation of surplus
- Madra and Ozselcuk consider class relationships to be impossible because of the impossibility of neutral position in relation to the class process
- However, they argue that class relationships do exist. Under capitalism these relations are formed under a masculine logic that produces an exception
- They argue for a non-fantasmatic approach to class under a feminine logic where no one entity has exclusive rights to surplus. They label this approach communism
- By contrast, Zizek contends that class is already a feminine concept
- Class is feminine because it is the underlying antagonism of all other discourses. As such it is the exception which constitutes these concepts, including itself
- Because class is non-all, it cannot be the positive object of research, although Zizek does make ‘class’ analyses in which he suggests that capitalism follows a masculine logic. At the same time, for Zizek any ideological critique is at the same time a class critique.

Spontaneously, I support Madra and Ozselcuk over Zizek, perhaps because they appear to produce a more viable political solution. But I have come to wonder whether this rests on my, and their, misreading of sexuation. I have really struggled to bring together Zizek and Madra/Ozselcuk on class and I think it is because they understand sexuation differing. This is why I have put on hold my essay and stopped to reflect on sexuation. Thoughts?

[i] In the thesis itself I plan to extend this essay to consider the positive relations (jouissance, ideological fantasy) that stem from the instantiation of class impossibility within capitalism. These relations revolve around the ideological triad liberal-democratic-multiculturalism and the underlying enjoyment of commodity fetishism, as well as the ‘circuit of capital’.
[ii] Madra and Ozselcuk primarily write together
[iii] This group publish primarily out of the Rethinking Marxism journal
[iv] As we shall see, the very act of defining class, let alone debating particular definitions of class, is perhaps the central political/theoretical division separating Zizek from Madra and Ozselcuk
[v] The distinction between an exception, which is accepted within the symbolic terms of the discourse and an exclusion, is vital to this understanding.
[vi] This perspective does not hold any distinction between necessary and surplus or direct/indirect labour
[vii] What I am primarily interested in is what happens to the exclusion which founds the masculine order (the reserve supply of workers) under a feminine logic
[viii] As far as I know Madra and Ozselcuk have not yet appeared on Zizek’s radar
[ix] Implicit in the sense that class is not specifically mentioned as in ‘In capitalism, class relations operate as...’ but dealing with subject matter traditionally linked with class; the proletariat, global slums etc

Update, 24th June

2008-06-24T13:09:00.002+12:00

Having been away for a number of weeks, I have had time to reconsider my thesis and where it is headed. I don’t think that much has changed, although I may be more aware of the limitations of the project and where it fits into a wider range of literature.

My core question, slightly tweaked, is as follows; “How can a post-Lacanian conception of Marxism be utilised to produce a critique of capitalism and move beyond this form of political economy?”

I still intend to investigate this question through two fundamental enquires, which will form the major sections of the thesis;

A post-Lacanian theory of capitalism
Political economy beyond capitalism

At the conference I attended I was delighted to discover a research community working specifically on the latter question, with a particular interest in psychoanalysis and Marxism. This group, operating broadly as the ‘Association for Economic and Social Analysis’ (AESA) in association with the ‘Rethinking Marxism’ journal, are attempting to rehabilitate both Marxism and communism through psychoanalysis, taking into account the latter’s emphasis on the real, fantasy and enjoyment.

The core line of enquiry for this group of scholars has been rethinking class as a process rather than a transcendental entity. Here class becomes a fundamental impossibility - the impossibility of a fair and equal distribution and appropriation of surplus. This impossibility does not refer purely to capitalism and surplus-value, but rather to the broader category of political economy.

The fundamental condition of possibility for any modality of economy is the production of surplus labour (labour is always surplus; necessary labour cannot be distinguished as production is always a collective process) and the impossibility of a fair distribution and appropriation of this surplus. In this sense, there is no class relationship – a lack which imbues all formations of political economy. This lack produces an excessive response, in the sense that there will always be class relationships which respond to the inherent impossibility of class. Thus, class is not only an impossibility, but the range of ideological responses to this impossibility. These responses seek to pacify the affect of the real in much the same manner as I examined in my Master’s thesis.

Essentially, I am seeking to produce a post-Lacanian theory of the Marxist critique of capitalism and political economy, starting from the point that prevents these objects from being; class. I will then, by extending on the ideological analysis I outlined in my Master’s thesis, seek to understand the manner in which this impossibility plays itself out to form what we know as capitalism. Here I will label class as the concrete universal and seek to examine the various responses to the concrete universal, predominately enjoyment through commodity fetishism/consumerism but also ‘limiting apparatus’ such as democracy (the primary mode of civilisation for capitalist political economy), trade unions and charities.

I believe that my eventual position will be that some form of base-super structure relationship occurs (concurrent with psychoanalytic theory), with liberal-democratic-consumerism being the main form of ideological investment, which disavows the fundamental circuit of capitalism and places a distance between the real of class struggle and the capitalist subject.

The question of anti-capitalist politics than becomes one of how to produce a form of political economy in relation to the impossibility of class. Latest work in the ‘rethinking Marxism’ community relates to a non-fantasmatic conception of economic community where no subject enjoys exclusive rights to surplus. According to this group, in particular Yahya Madra and Ceren Oszelcuk, such a conception of political economy corresponds to the Lacanian notion of the feminine non-All.

Indeed, there appears to be a burgeoning range of literature on ‘community economics’ that takes a similar position to Madra and Oszelcuk. The field of community economics does not rely exclusively on psychoanalysis or Marxism, but is often informed by these disciplines, as well as various elements of postmodern theory.

I think that at this stage much of this work is fairly clunky, but it is reassuring to know that such a field exists. In time I will have to get to know this literature and position myself within the debates. At this stage, however, I need to focus on developing my theory of capitalism.

The most difficult question for me, I believe, is the status of capitalism. That is, what is the status of class in relation to the social? Is this the fundamental impossibility to which all relations return (or, more subtly, the fundamental exclusion which founds the horizon for the political)? Certainly one can cite any number of societal impossibilities, starting with society itself as an impossible object. It is equally valid to state the freedom is impossible, or justice, or democracy. In fact, all objects are impossible objects. This is the fundamental ontological conviction of political psychoanalysis.

Why then should class be privileged? Additionally, is there any underlying logic to capitalism, such that it is not contingent? I believe these two questions are linked, and provide the most pressing issues for me to consider.

For now though, I believe that I must begin by laying out my conception of class, moving through the genealogy of the concept, through contemporary debates before outlining and justifying my theoretical position

Zizek’s Marxism; From Surplus- Value to Surplus-Jouissance

2008-06-23T12:58:00.000+12:00

Script of paper presented at Surplus/Excess conference, University of California, Riverside, April 4-5, 2008.

The Lacanian world of desire, fantasy, jouissance and the Real can appear quite divorced from the concerns of traditional political philosophy. Recently, however, psychoanalytic thought has become a major strand within political theory, especially in continental and radical Leftist circles. This influence stems largely from Lacanian, as opposed to Freudian, psychoanalysis.

Lacan re-developed Freud’s work by focusing on language as the structuring element of human subjectivity and social life. No longer bound to the clinic, psychoanalysis has been increasingly utilised by political theorists. A central discourse within the development of political psychoanalysis has been a return to the Marxist tradition.

The rearticulation of Marxism with psychoanalysis has been largely driven by the work of Lacanian political philosopher, Slavoj Zizek . Zizek’s political work, particularly his usage of Marxism, has proven highly controversial. This controversy stems from the apparent incommensurability between traditional Marxist categories and Zizek’s emphasis on the relationship between lack and excess through what Lacan labelled ‘the Real’ and its positivised correlate, Jouissance.

Zizek’s rejection of traditional Marxism in the name of psychoanalysis has, however, opened up a new space for rethinking Marxism and renewing a Marxist critique of capitalist political economy. In this mornings presentation, I will investigate one element of Zizek’s redeployment of the Marxist tradition; the homology he cites been Lacanian surplus-jouissance and Marxist surplus-value. Through this homology, Zizek suggests that the dynamics of lack and excess in human subjectivity are mirrored by the logic of capitalism.

Through a brief analysis of two key global economic problems, poverty and environmental degradation, I will argue that this approach to surplus opens up exciting new ground for a critique of capitalism. Conversely, the very conditions that produce the uniqueness of this critique appear to prevent Zizek’s work from developing a productive notion of radical anti-capitalist politics that is able to offer any hope for the future.

Let us start by considering the dialectic of lack and excess that is present in both surplus-jouissance and surplus-value, by first reflecting on the Lacanian category of surplus-jouissance.

Surplus Jouissance

According to Lacan, the human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess. Lack is generated because language creates a barrier between the subject and the world of things; any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which it refers. Lacan called this gap the Real. The Real, however, operates not only lack, but also as excess because lack is itself repressed, resulting in an unconscious belief in a time before lack. 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. Lacan called this state Jouissance.

Although in English jouissance is often translated as enjoyment, it is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, but rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression, sexuality and suffering.

In order to deconstruct the often difficult concept of jouissance, analytically, we can distinguish two orders , although no such distinction exists for the subject of language. The first is the imagined state of jouissance ‘before the letter’, the mystical state of unity supposed to have been experienced by the body. The second occurs as a response to the impossibility of the former and the subsequent disavowel of this impossibility via fantasy.

Thus, the notion of pure jouissance is a fantasmatic creation, generated only by the entry into language. However, the subject stills holds onto the possibility of such a return, although any attempt necessarily fails. Conversely, this very failure creates the only true jouissance for the subject, surplus-jouissance

Thus, Žižek argues that there is no jouissance for the subject before surplus-jouissance. As such, social analysis should always focus on this order, rather than considering it to be secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities – an excessive compensation for an originary lack, one which is simultaneously both imaginary and very Real.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. Objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. In this sense objet a is the remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance, the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation.

Objet a connects the lack of the Real and the excess of jouissance because it operates as both the object-cause and the object of desire. Objet a is the cause of desire because it is experienced as the lack or gap within the symbolic realm which drives the process of desire, but also acts as the object of desire because particular objects come to embody this gap, such that they become the object of the subject’s desire.

That is, an object comes to represent for the subject that which is supposed to be missing from their existance and hence suggests the possibility of a return to original unity. The impossibility of this return has two affects. It means that desire can never be satisfied; on obtaining the object, the subject discovers that their desire has not been fufilled and moves onto another object; this is the process of hysterical consumption in the capitalist subject.

Secondly, the subject seeks out antagonisms upon which to externalise the impossibility of total jouissance. This explains the transgressive nature of jouissance; the subject acts against themself in order to explain away the impossibility of a return to unity.

Žižek describes Coca-cola as the perfect embodiment of objet a and as such the ultimate capitalist merchandise. In coke, we have a drink removed of all the objectively necessary properties of a satisfying drink; it provides no nutritional benefit, it does not quench thirst, nor provide the ‘satisfied calm’ of an alcoholic beverage. Instead, all that is left is the mysterious ‘X’, the surplus over enjoyment that is characteristic of the commodity. Coca-Cola seem to have a good understanding of jouissance, as seen in previous slogans;

‘Coke is IT’
And the imperative ‘Coca-Cola: Enjoy’

Žižek has described diet-coke as the final step in this process – the commodification of nothing itself – since the caffeine that gives coke its distinctive taste has been removed. But he did not forsee the recent launch of Coke ‘Zero’, literally nothing in a can. Coke’s marketers further revealed their understanding of Lacanian theory with the accompanying marketing campaign . This campaign portrays Coke Zero as an element of perfection as its malignant elements have been removed; their advertising slogan asks “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides”. This could well be the misleading motto of objet a.

We can see then how the dynamic of lack and excess in subjectivity aids our understanding of capitalism. The subject’s desire can never be satisfied; instead they go on wanting more and more in a never ending process of consumption unconsciously believed to be the path to wholeness. However, although we can see that the manipulation of surplus-jouissance by capitalist advertising is certainly a source of surplus and profit, Zizek cites a stronger, structural, link between surplus-jouissance and the operation of capitalism, in the Marxist notion of surplus-value, to which we now turn.

Surplus- Value

Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value to mirror that of surplus jouissance; a homologous process by which the existence of lack produces a constitutive and compensatory surplus. Zizek argues that this logic extends to the operation of capitalism as a totality.

He contends that surplus value occurs under capitalism because the natural state of labour as a commodity is the production of surplus above the necessary cost of labour. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turns money into capital which subsquently ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit.

Importantly, however, corresponding to the logic of surplus- jouissance, in capitalism the production of surplus is only possible because of the existance of lack. Lack is revealled by the presence of symptoms which simultaneously contradict and allow the ‘official’ operation of capitalism.

In his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek famously argued that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by detecting a constitutive exception within capitalism, a necessary excess or imbalance which, rather than signalling the imperfect realisation of these principles, reveals the truth of their constitution.

As an illustration, the notion of freedom operates as a universal principle at the core of liberal-democratic-capitalist ideology. However, within that ideology one specific freedom, the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market, subverts the notion of freedom itself, yet is necessary for the continued existance of freedom; without the wage labour system, contemporary capitalist freedoms would be impossible.

The same symptomatic structure exists in relation to the production of surplus value. Once labour becomes a commodity – that is, for sale on the market, it is negated through its own fair exchange. The worker is exploited not because they are underpaid (they are infact, fully compensated for their labour power), but because of the very position in which the worker exists; having to sell their labour as a commodity.

The symptomatic element of the form of surplus-value, then, is the existence of exploitation, even when, officially there is none; when the worker is fully paid. This constitutive exception within surplus-value produces a fundamental fissure, a Real affect that Zizek labels class. Class acts as the Real element which resists symbolisation within capitalism, the lack which drives and allows for the production of surplus-value.

For Zizek, in stark contrast to Marx, class is not a positively existing element; rather it is a hitch within capitalism that cannot be integrated into the system, yet allows for its excessive operation.

Thus, as well as a lack within the system, class is also an excess in the sense that it is the surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate, and as such functions as the contradiction which drives surplus-value and capitalism.

Indeed, the whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradictions. As with the surplus-jouissance of that defines subjectivity, capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function. Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis, but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is the basis of the capitalist production of surplus

Thus, the notion of class as surplus adds another dimension to Zizek’s identification of surplus-jouissance and surplus-value as the structuring logic of capitalism. Indeed, class could be consider to be the founding moment of both, particularly if we consider commodity fetishism to be the fundamental structure of the surplus-jouissance in the capitalist subject.

However, unlike either surplus-value or surplus- jouissance, where the surplus is positivised and counted for within the existing order, these reserve workers are offically surplus to capitalist requirements. These workers, or rather non-workers, are surplus as waste; they are not strictly required for the operation of capitalism, although, paradoxically it is this waste that allows capitalist surplus to be produced.

I witnessed an example of this waste on the beaches of Santa Monica. Here homeless people lay, completely covered by all manner of types of decaying material. The affect was that the human did not appear at all; all that was left was the appearance of rubbish, a surplus that capitalism considers pure waste.

Noticeably, the otherwise beautiful beach was covered by an excess of rubbish bins but very little rubbish. I could not help thinking the very sad thought that it would simply be easier for the people of Santa Monica if the homeless made these bins their new residence. This is the status of the reserve surplus of global workers; a disavowed waste, radically excluded from capitalist ideology.

Thus we can see how surplus operates in relationship to poverty within capitalism. Poverty is necessary; without the reserve army of surplus labour that is poverty, the capitalist wage system would be unable to function. For this reason, however, poverty as an excess is also necessarily excluded; the same capitalist dynamic of lack and excess which creates poverty allows the subject to repress it’s existance. This repression can be seen in our contemporary capitalist responses to poverty. These take the form of either band-aid super-ego solutions, such as charity and fair trade or a ‘purification’ of the capitalism process through institutions like the World Bank.

Alternatively, poverty-as-surplus is simply ignored, disavowed, much like the waste on Santa Monica beach.

What these responses have in common is that they are unable to acknowledge the fundamental status of poverty as a required reserve-surplus. A constitutive exception, which Zizek labels the concrete universal that allows for the continued functioning of capitalism.

Similarily we can use Zizek’s usage of surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to understand the failure of the environment movement, and lets be sure, as long as this movement is a capitalist movement, it will be a failure. We have previously considered the manner in which hysterical capitalist subjectivity is structured to maintain the constant desire for commodities; the green movement has been unable to break through this excessive demand for jouissance. Instead, environmentalism is articulated strictly within capitalist ideology, such that green initatives only occur if they conform to the logic of capitalism; hence the value of the green dollar and the power of the empty signifier ‘sustainable development’. This response fails to acknowledge capitalism’s fundamental requirement to revolutionise itself (just as it has in the face of the Green threat) to produce further surplus. Here we can easily understand Zizek and Fredric Jameson’s glib assertion that it is easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism.

The more radical green response is the demand for lower levels of consumption. Although this response correctly, if naively, challenges the fundamental modality of capitalist subjectivity, it again shows a total lack of awareness of the dynamics of capitalism.

Such an argument allows us to identify what Zizek labels a parallax gap between the green movement and developmentalism. The two discourses cannot be held together; an increase in economic development would only produce more environmental degradation. By contrast, a truly green economy would susbstantially increase global poverty.

Indeed, latest research by the New Zealand government suggests that if the world’s population were to consume at the same level as New Zealanders, a mid-range OECD country apparently in desperate need for economic growth, we would need another five planets to support the levels of research consumption.

If the problem then is capitalism, what are the alternatives? The traditional Leftist response is located Marx’s notion of communism. Marxist commnism has, however, been thoroughly rejected by Zizek and other psychoanalytic critics, firstly because of the actualities of totalitarian repression, but also because of Marx’s reliance on the form of surplus-value.

For Zizek, Marx’s political response to capitalism and surplus-value was ultimately fantasmatic. What Marx missed was the logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – wage labour and private appropriation – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for communal good. What Marx missed, however, is that it is this the inner contradiction of capitalism – between class and surplus-value – that drives capitalist productivity. That is, without class there is no surplus-value. Ultimately, perhaps Coca-Cola and Marxism have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by endeavoring to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause.

So, what does Zizek offer in the way of a program for future radical politics? Essentially and openly, Zizek offers nothing in terms of this form of political intervention. Instead he argues that we live in pessimistic times for radical politics. Asked about the revelance of his work for anti-capitalist struggle, a cause to which Zizek’s work has been increased orientated, Zizek stated in his characterisic manner;

‘I have a hat, but I have no rabbit’

This is not to suggest that Zizek work is not without political value. For Zizek, the proper political response is to reveal the surplus exclusion which structures ideology, a technique he labels ‘practicing the concrete universal.

An example of this approach occurred recently in the States with the ‘We are America’ campaign staged by illegal immigrants. In this campaign, the immigrants attempted to articulate themselves as the concrete universal, the necessary glue of American society. However, whilst this may be a good example of a protest based political intervention, it offers little basis for future movements.

I do not believe, however, that this is any reason to outrightly reject Zizek’s work and resort to the ‘rubber chickens’ that others are claiming as their rabbits. At a time when global capitalism has generated a paradoxical position where a small portion of humanity is living well beyond the capacity of the planet to support their activity, yet the majority of humanity is struggling to support their own material needs, the need to generate a new approach to political economy and the question of shared social life is as pressing as ever. These material concerns, remind us of the need to produce theory which has grounded political application, without losing sight of its theoretical convinctions. Thus, to quote Zizek;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity 'as such' outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the primary mode of social reproduction?

Recent work within the discipline of psychoanalytic politics has made steps to reconsider the relationship between surplus and exception, most notably in the notions of the ethics of drive, love, comedy and the associated ‘traversing of the fantasy’. Yet, so far no stable position has been developed. Neither has it been considered exactly how this new articulation would apply to the production of shared social life, particularly in regards to the economy. It is this task, I believe, which forms the shared future of psycho-Marxist theory.

Zizek's Marxism; From Surplus-Value to Surplus-Jouissance

2008-04-08T09:50:00.000+12:00

The Lacanian world of desire, fantasy, jouissance and the Real can appear quite divorced from the concerns of traditional political philosophy. Recently, however, psychoanalytic thought has become a major strand within political theory, especially in continental and radical Leftist circles. This influence stems largely from Lacanian, as opposed to Freudian, psychoanalysis.

Lacan re-developed Freud’s work by focusing on language as the structuring element of human subjectivity and social life. No longer bound to the clinic, psychoanalysis has been increasingly utilised by political theorists. A central discourse within the development of political psychoanalysis has been a return to the Marxist tradition.

The rearticulation of Marxism with psychoanalysis has been largely driven by the work of Lacanian political philosopher, Slavoj Zizek . Zizek’s political work, particularly his usage of Marxism, has proven highly controversial. This controversy stems from the apparent incommensurability between traditional Marxist categories and Zizek’s emphasis on the relationship between lack and excess through what Lacan labelled ‘the Real’ and its positivised correlate, Jouissance.

Zizek’s rejection of traditional Marxism in the name of psychoanalysis has, however, opened up a new space for rethinking Marxism and renewing a Marxist critique of capitalist political economy. In this mornings presentation, I will investigate one element of Zizek’s redeployment of the Marxist tradition; the homology he cites been Lacanian surplus-jouissance and Marxist surplus-value. Through this homology, Zizek suggests that the dynamics of lack and excess in human subjectivity are mirrored by the logic of capitalism.

Through a brief analysis of two key global economic problems, poverty and environmental degradation, I will argue that this approach to surplus opens up exciting new ground for a critique of capitalism. Conversely, the very conditions that produce the uniqueness of this critique appear to prevent Zizek’s work from developing a productive notion of radical anti-capitalist politics that is able to offer any hope for the future.

Let us start by considering the dialectic of lack and excess that is present in both surplus-jouissance and surplus-value, by first reflecting on the Lacanian category of surplus-jouissance.

Surplus Jouissance

According to Lacan, the human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess. Lack is generated because language creates a barrier between the subject and the world of things; any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which it refers. Lacan called this gap the Real. The Real, however, operates not only lack, but also as excess because lack is itself repressed, resulting in an unconscious belief in a time before lack. 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. Lacan called this state Jouissance.

Although in English jouissance is often translated as enjoyment, it is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, but rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression, sexuality and suffering.

In order to deconstruct the often difficult concept of jouissance, analytically, we can distinguish two orders , although no such distinction exists for the subject of language. The first is the imagined state of jouissance ‘before the letter’, the mystical state of unity supposed to have been experienced by the body. The second occurs as a response to the impossibility of the former and the subsequent disavowel of this impossibility via fantasy.

Thus, the notion of pure jouissance is a fantasmatic creation, generated only by the entry into language. However, the subject stills holds onto the possibility of such a return, although any attempt necessarily fails. Conversely, this very failure creates the only true jouissance for the subject, surplus-jouissance

Thus, Žižek argues that there is no jouissance for the subject before surplus-jouissance. As such, social analysis should always focus on this order, rather than considering it to be secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities – an excessive compensation for an originary lack, one which is simultaneously both imaginary and very Real.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. Objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. In this sense objet a is the remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance, the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation.

Objet a connects the lack of the Real and the excess of jouissance because it operates as both the object-cause and the object of desire. Objet a is the cause of desire because it is experienced as the lack or gap within the symbolic realm which drives the process of desire, but also acts as the object of desire because particular objects come to embody this gap, such that they become the object of the subject’s desire.

That is, an object comes to represent for the subject that which is supposed to be missing from their existance and hence suggests the possibility of a return to original unity. The impossibility of this return has two affects. It means that desire can never be satisfied; on obtaining the object, the subject discovers that their desire has not been fufilled and moves onto another object; this is the process of hysterical consumption in the capitalist subject.

Secondly, the subject seeks out antagonisms upon which to externalise the impossibility of total jouissance. This explains the transgressive nature of jouissance; the subject acts against themself in order to explain away the impossibility of a return to unity.

Žižek describes Coca-cola as the perfect embodiment of objet a and as such the ultimate capitalist merchandise. In coke, we have a drink removed of all the objectively necessary properties of a satisfying drink; it provides no nutritional benefit, it does not quench thirst, nor provide the ‘satisfied calm’ of an alcoholic beverage. Instead, all that is left is the mysterious ‘X’, the surplus over enjoyment that is characteristic of the commodity. Coca-Cola seem to have a good understanding of jouissance, as seen in previous slogans;

‘Coke is IT’
And the imperative ‘Coca-Cola: Enjoy’

Žižek has described diet-coke as the final step in this process – the commodification of nothing itself – since the caffeine that gives coke its distinctive taste has been removed. But he did not forsee the recent launch of Coke ‘Zero’, literally nothing in a can. Coke’s marketers further revealed their understanding of Lacanian theory with the accompanying marketing campaign . This campaign portrays Coke Zero as an element of perfection as its malignant elements have been removed; their advertising slogan asks “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides”. This could well be the misleading motto of objet a.

We can see then how the dynamic of lack and excess in subjectivity aids our understanding of capitalism. The subject’s desire can never be satisfied; instead they go on wanting more and more in a never ending process of consumption unconsciously believed to be the path to wholeness. However, although we can see that the manipulation of surplus-jouissance by capitalist advertising is certainly a source of surplus and profit, Zizek cites a stronger, structural, link between surplus-jouissance and the operation of capitalism, in the Marxist notion of surplus-value, to which we now turn.

Surplus- Value

Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value to mirror that of surplus jouissance; a homologous process by which the existence of lack produces a constitutive and compensatory surplus. Zizek argues that this logic extends to the operation of capitalism as a totality.

He contends that surplus value occurs under capitalism because the natural state of labour as a commodity is the production of surplus above the necessary cost of labour. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turns money into capital which subsquently ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit.

Importantly, however, corresponding to the logic of surplus- jouissance, in capitalism the production of surplus is only possible because of the existance of lack. Lack is revealled by the presence of symptoms which simultaneously contradict and allow the ‘official’ operation of capitalism.

In his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek famously argued that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by detecting a constitutive exception within capitalism, a necessary excess or imbalance which, rather than signalling the imperfect realisation of these principles, reveals the truth of their constitution.

As an illustration, the notion of freedom operates as a universal principle at the core of liberal-democratic-capitalist ideology. However, within that ideology one specific freedom, the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market, subverts the notion of freedom itself, yet is necessary for the continued existance of freedom; without the wage labour system, contemporary capitalist freedoms would be impossible.

The same symptomatic structure exists in relation to the production of surplus value. Once labour becomes a commodity – that is, for sale on the market, it is negated through its own fair exchange. The worker is exploited not because they are underpaid (they are infact, fully compensated for their labour power), but because of the very position in which the worker exists; having to sell their labour as a commodity.

The symptomatic element of the form of surplus-value, then, is the existence of exploitation, even when, officially there is none; when the worker is fully paid. This constitutive exception within surplus-value produces a fundamental fissure, a Real affect that Zizek labels class. Class acts as the Real element which resists symbolisation within capitalism, the lack which drives and allows for the production of surplus-value.

For Zizek, in stark contrast to Marx, class is not a positively existing element; rather it is a hitch within capitalism that cannot be integrated into the system, yet allows for its excessive operation.

Thus, as well as a lack within the system, class is also an excess in the sense that it is the surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate, and as such functions as the contradiction which drives surplus-value and capitalism.

Indeed, the whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradictions. As with the surplus-jouissance of that defines subjectivity, capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function. Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis, but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is the basis of the capitalist production of surplus

Thus, the notion of class as surplus adds another dimension to Zizek’s identification of surplus-jouissance and surplus-value as the structuring logic of capitalism. Indeed, class could be consider to be the founding moment of both, particularly if we consider commodity fetishism to be the fundamental structure of the surplus-jouissance in the capitalist subject.

However, unlike either surplus-value or surplus- jouissance, where the surplus is positivised and counted for within the existing order, these reserve workers are offically surplus to capitalist requirements. These workers, or rather non-workers, are surplus as waste; they are not strictly required for the operation of capitalism, although, paradoxically it is this waste that allows capitalist surplus to be produced.

I witnessed an example of this waste on the beaches of Santa Monica. Here homeless people lay, completely covered by all manner of types of decaying material. The affect was that the human did not appear at all; all that was left was the appearance of rubbish, a surplus that capitalism considers pure waste.

Noticeably, the otherwise beautiful beach was covered by an excess of rubbish bins but very little rubbish. I could not help thinking the very sad thought that it would simply be easier for the people of Santa Monica if the homeless made these bins their new residence. This is the status of the reserve surplus of global workers; a disavowed waste, radically excluded from capitalist ideology.

Thus we can see how surplus operates in relationship to poverty within capitalism. Poverty is necessary; without the reserve army of surplus labour that is poverty, the capitalist wage system would be unable to function. For this reason, however, poverty as an excess is also necessarily excluded; the same capitalist dynamic of lack and excess which creates poverty allows the subject to repress it’s existance. This repression can be seen in our contemporary capitalist responses to poverty. These take the form of either band-aid super-ego solutions, such as charity and fair trade or a ‘purification’ of the capitalism process through institutions like the World Bank.

Alternatively, poverty-as-surplus is simply ignored, disavowed, much like the waste on Santa Monica beach.

What these responses have in common is that they are unable to acknowledge the fundamental status of poverty as a required reserve-surplus. A constitutive exception, which Zizek labels the concrete universal that allows for the continued functioning of capitalism.

Similarily we can use Zizek’s usage of surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to understand the failure of the environment movement, and lets be sure, as long as this movement is a capitalist movement, it will be a failure. We have previously considered the manner in which hysterical capitalist subjectivity is structured to maintain the constant desire for commodities; the green movement has been unable to break through this excessive demand for jouissance. Instead, environmentalism is articulated strictly within capitalist ideology, such that green initatives only occur if they conform to the logic of capitalism; hence the value of the green dollar and the power of the empty signifier ‘sustainable development’. This response fails to acknowledge capitalism’s fundamental requirement to revolutionise itself (just as it has in the face of the Green threat) to produce further surplus. Here we can easily understand Zizek and Fredric Jameson’s glib assertion that it is easier to imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism.

The more radical green response is the demand for lower levels of consumption. Although this response correctly, if naively, challenges the fundamental modality of capitalist subjectivity, it again shows a total lack of awareness of the dynamics of capitalism.

Such an argument allows us to identify what Zizek labels a parallax gap between the green movement and developmentalism. The two discourses cannot be held together; an increase in economic development would only produce more environmental degradation. By contrast, a truly green economy would susbstantially increase global poverty.

Indeed, latest research by the New Zealand government suggests that if the world’s population were to consume at the same level as New Zealanders, a mid-range OECD country apparently in desperate need for economic growth, we would need another five planets to support the levels of research consumption.

If the problem then is capitalism, what are the alternatives? The traditional Leftist response is located Marx’s notion of communism. Marxist commnism has, however, been thoroughly rejected by Zizek and other psychoanalytic critics, firstly because of the actualities of totalitarian repression, but also because of Marx’s reliance on the form of surplus-value.

For Zizek, Marx’s political response to capitalism and surplus-value was ultimately fantasmatic. What Marx missed was the logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – wage labour and private appropriation – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for communal good. What Marx missed, however, is that it is this the inner contradiction of capitalism – between class and surplus-value – that drives capitalist productivity. That is, without class there is no surplus-value. Ultimately, perhaps Coca-Cola and Marxism have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by endeavoring to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause.

So, what does Zizek offer in the way of a program for future radical politics? Essentially and openly, Zizek offers nothing in terms of this form of political intervention. Instead he argues that we live in pessimistic times for radical politics. Asked about the revelance of his work for anti-capitalist struggle, a cause to which Zizek’s work has been increased orientated, Zizek stated in his characterisic manner;

‘I have a hat, but I have no rabbit’

This is not to suggest that Zizek work is not without political value. For Zizek, the proper political response is to reveal the surplus exclusion which structures ideology, a technique he labels ‘practicing the concrete universal.

An example of this approach occurred recently in the States with the ‘We are America’ campaign staged by illegal immigrants. In this campaign, the immigrants attempted to articulate themselves as the concrete universal, the necessary glue of American society. However, whilst this may be a good example of a protest based political intervention, it offers little basis for future movements.

I do not believe, however, that this is any reason to outrightly reject Zizek’s work and resort to the ‘rubber chickens’ that others are claiming as their rabbits. At a time when global capitalism has generated a paradoxical position where a small portion of humanity is living well beyond the capacity of the planet to support their activity, yet the majority of humanity is struggling to support their own material needs, the need to generate a new approach to political economy and the question of shared social life is as pressing as ever. These material concerns, remind us of the need to produce theory which has grounded political application, without losing sight of its theoretical convinctions. Thus, to quote Zizek;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity 'as such' outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the primary mode of social reproduction?

Recent work within the discipline of psychoanalytic politics has made steps to reconsider the relationship between surplus and exception, most notably in the notions of the ethics of drive, love, comedy and the associated ‘traversing of the fantasy’. Yet, so far no stable position has been developed. Neither has it been considered exactly how this new articulation would apply to the production of shared social life, particularly in regards to the economy. It is this task, I believe, which forms the shared future of psycho-Marxist theory.

Thank You.

On the homology betweeen surplus-value and surplus-jouissance

2008-03-27T10:15:00.000+13:00

Psychoanalysis and Marxism have long been used by left-orientated political theorists to explain the development of capitalism. Initially, psychoanalysis was attached to Marxism to explain the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in the face of the continued presence and development of capitalism. In this initial relationship, characterised by the Freudian Marxism of theorists such as Reich, and Frankfurt school theorists, Adorno and Marcuse, psychoanalysis was used to add a theory of subjectivity to Marxism in the face of the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. Hence, the Frankfurt school theorists moved onto analysis of culture.

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 après-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 prey 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)

Žižek’s most accepted role as a Marxist, certainly concerning his earlier work, 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).

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 opening section of 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.

Žižek considers there to be a fundamental homology between the logics of the Marxist critique of political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. This homology is between the Marxist conception of surplus-value and Lacanian surplus-jouissance. This link, whilst regularly alluded to by Žižek, actually stems from Lacan’s 16th and 17th Seminars[i] . Lacan equated surplus-value with objet a, the object of surplus-enjoyment, although his concern was more with the psyche of the worker, rather than the structure of capitalism (Fink, 1995: 96). It is in this latter sense that Žižek has brought the link between surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to prominence. This homology adds greatly to our understanding of capitalism, suggesting that every Marxist critique of the logic of capitalism is always a Lacanian critique, excepting for a few Zizekian twists. In this sense we can regard surplus-value to be the logic of the capitalist symbolic order under the horizon of capitalism and surplus-jouissance the logic of the imaginary. By adding the Real as the third dimension in this analysis of surplus – the Real qua class struggle or the reserve army of labour – we can see how Žižek’s use of this homology can greatly increase our understanding of the dynamics of capitalism. Nonetheless, whilst this form of analysis opens up a new line of questioning about capitalism and the possibilities of radical political action, Žižek’s assertion of the constitutive nature of surplus, certainly in the psyche, if not the economy, and his rejection of a ethico-political movement from desire to drive in relation to capitalism does not bring us any closer to a notion of radical anti-capitalist politics.

Surplus- Jouissance: Compensation for the human condition

The human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess. Lack in the sense of the negativity at the heart of being, caused by the subject’s essential separation from jouissance by the signifier. Excess, because of the compensation the subject receives for this sacrifice, a surplus-jouissance found in objet a, the object cause of desire. Žižek, following Lacan and Freud before him, defines this movement between lack and excess as the death drive; being is never just being, such that; “ Human life is never “just life”: humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things” (Zizek, 2006b: 62)

Because of this excessive dialectic, the human being operates as a being of desire. Desire is not a biological property of the human organism, but rather one impinged on the subject by the forced entry into language. Nonetheless, the human being, like any animal, is subject to a number of biological needs. These needs, often cited by socio-biologists and evolutionary theorists as the causal driver of psycho-social life, are not able to be directly expressed as they are in an animal[ii]. We humans lose access to any possible biological essence upon entry into the symbolic order. Indeed, given the helplessness of the newborn infant, it would be a stretch to assert any kind of biological essence.

This dependency means that the biological needs of the infant can only be fulfilled through the Other, normally via the parental unit. Thus need is always articulated as a demand to the Other, initially as a variety of cries and latter through language. The reliance on the Other to fulfil need comes to be seen as an expression of love from the Other (Fink, 1995: 89). Whilst need can be at least temporarily satisfied, demand, or more accurately the love sought from the Other in demand, can achieve no such satisfaction.

With the entry of the signifier, the demand to the Other in the articulation of need becomes desire, desire being the excess of demand in need. Desire structures the human experience in the sense that reality only exists to the extent that need becomes mediated by the signifier, creating desire. That is, symbolic castration creates the conditions under which we are able to pursue our desires. Desire is never an individual matter, one that is pursued by an autonomous ego; rather desire is always constituted in the symbolic order, structured by a fundamental fantasy that coheres the subject’s relationship to castration. Put more simply, for Lacan, desire is always desire of the Other. Because the Other is always lacking, desire is unable to be satisfied; having been forced to give up need, the subject finds that the symbolic order is no substitute. Instead, as I will soon advance the subject receives a compensatory enjoyment in surplus-jouissance, embodied in objet a, the object cause of desire. Such compensation establishes the dialectic of enjoyment in both the psyche and capitalism; lack breeds excess, but this excess is always lacking.

This dialectic is characterised by the movement between the Real – that which resists symbolisation – and jouissance. According to Bruce Fink, the Real can be divided into two basic categories, the Real ‘before the letter’ (R1) and the Real ‘after the letter’ (R2). R1 is the name we give to the (mythical) time before language, a time that is created only by signification itself. There is no absence in R1. It is only R2 that cuts up the Real of R1 through the act of creating what is labeled as reality via the symbolic. These cuts in the Real before the letter occur because of the distance between reality and the Real that is created by the symbolic, which cannot fully grasp what is beyond its limits. In reality, R1 exists only as an absence, this absence is given a name and thus an existence; without the operation of naming in the symbolic, R1 would only be felt as an absence- through the process of naming, R1 is given a symbolic existence in reality (Fink, 1995,p.24-5).Therefore the Real cannot simply be considered external to symbolisation either in the form of R1 or R2. The Real is not just what is excluded from the symbolic, but rather has what Lacan termed an ‘extimate’ relationship with the symbolic order in that the Real is both within and outside the symbolic at the same time. This is the case for R1 because it establishes the very limits of symbolisation, but also for R2. R2 operates as the factor that distorts symbolisation from within; it is the disavowed ‘X’ that warps symbolisation in a manner in which we cannot be aware at the time of ‘knowing’. In this sense, the Real is an effect without a known cause. Although the Real is disavowed, however, it is also at the same time the elemental pre-condition and support of reality in the sense that it constitutes its very limits (which, in this case of R2, are internal, rather than internal to the symbolic) and thus the conditions of possibility for the symbolic (Kay, 2003,p.168).

Whilst the Real operates with the symbolic realm as a lack, at the same time the Real produces an excessive affect. Lacan labels this affect jouissance. Jouissance is a paradoxical state of suffering/enjoyment that lies ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ (Evans, 1996,p.92). Jouissance, often translated into enjoyment, is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, but rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering. As with the Real, according to Fink (1995:60) there are two orders of jouissance, before (J1) and after the letter (J2).

J1 is the pure unmediated jouissance that is sacrificed with the castrating entry into language. J2 occurs as a substitute for the loss of J1, a compensation that occurs through fantasy in the staging of impossible acts to regain J1 (impossible because the subject cannot return to a time before language). J1 itself is a fantasy creation, produced because of the lack within the symbolic order (maintaining the feeling that there was a time before lack). Because J1 is a creation of language, Žižek contends that there is no jouissance for the subject before J2, surplus-jouissance. Therefore, social analysis should always focus on J2, or surplus-jouissance, rather than seeing it as a secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities – an excessive compensation for an originary lack, one which is simultaneously an imaginary illusion and very Real.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. In The Parallax View (Zizek, 2006b), Žižek contends that objet a is; “The object of psychoanalysis… the core of the psychoanalytic experience” (p.19). Žižek identifies objet a as being the cause of the Parallax gap (the incommensurable gap between two objects of a totality), objet a being the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and that produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. In light of its ineffable form, objet a is a, if not the, central concern of fantasy. Fantasy constructs desire around the objet a; fantasy does not seek to satisfy desire, but rather constructs it, teaching the subject how to desire (Zizek, 1997,p.7).

Objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, a remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance. In this sense it is the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation (Zupancic, 2006: 159). Objet a can be considered the site of fundamental lack, the void at which the subject remains perpetually riven. Objet a connects the lack of the Real and the excess of jouissance. Objet a is also both the object-cause and the logic of desire; its paradoxical logic is such that whilst an object may appear to be the cause of desire, that object has actually been created by the process of desire. Thus objet a may operates as both the object and cause of desire (Kay, 2003: 166). An object, say a commodity item like a pair of shoes, may appear to be the cause of desire; ‘I have to have those shoes, they are perfect for me because…’. The illusion, however, is that this object has taken the place of objet a which is causing the desire for the object. There is, however, always a gap between the cause and object of desire, a gap which further prevents the satisfaction of desire; the object can be obtained, but when it is it ceases to be the object of desire. Instead desire continues on its metonymical chain. This impossibility is the central element of the role of fantasy in desire; fantasy supports the subject’s desire, maintaining an appropriate distance from the object. Such is the emptiness of desire that the subject does not really want to obtain the object, instead what is desire is desire itself, a distance which is maintained by the construction of fantasy (Fink, 1995: 90). In this sense, as Fink suggests; “Desire is an end in itself: it seeks only more desire, not fixation on a specific object” (Fink, 1997:26)

Objet a is able to function as this paradoxical object-cause because it is the remnant of the Real, R1, that remains in the subject after the subject enters the symbolic order and an element of the Other, the lack that persists on account of the inability of language to connect with material reality[iii]. The manner in which objet a functions is thus dependent upon the manner in which lack is constructed in fantasy. This fantasmatic construction creates the illusion of consistency in the subject. For this consistency to operate, some object must be postivised such that it can stand in for the inherent lack that would otherwise threaten consciousness (Zizek, 1997,p.81; 2001,p.149). This object is then retroactively posited as the cause of desire.
Thus we can consider objet a to be the embodiment of surplus-jouissance, the ‘coincidence of limit and excess, of lack and surplus… the left over which embodies the fundamental, constitutive lack’(Zizek, 1989: 53).

As well as objet a, surplus-jouissance – in its form as a renunciation of jouissance – is also a form of the super-ego. The super-ego is a transgressive site of jouissance; we enjoy submitting to laws through the surplus-enjoyment supplied by the super-ego. Super-ego jouissance occurs because of the (forced) choice the subject makes away from pure jouissance and into language. The impossibility of a return is repressed; what is repressed is that the subject never had 'it' in the first place. Through the maintenance of this possibility, a form of guilt is forced upon the subject when it submits to the law. However, as this submission necessarily fails to suture the symbolic order, the more submission is required. It is through fantasy the subject learns to control their access to jouissance and thus structure their desire.

Coca-Cola as a Reader of Lacan

Žižek describes coca-cola as the perfect embodiment of objet a and as such the ultimate capitalist merchandise, deeply embedded in the logic of the super-ego and surplus-jouissance. In coke, we have a drink removed of all the objectively necessary properties of a satisfying drink; it provides no nutritional benefit – it certainly does not quench thirst – or provide the ‘satisfied calm’ of an alcoholic beverage. Instead, all that is left is the mysterious ‘X’, the surplus over enjoyment that is characteristic of the commodity. Žižek describes diet-coke as the final step in this process – the commodification of nothing itself – since the caffeine that gives coke its distinctive taste has been removed. ‘We drink the nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property that is in effect merely an envelope of a void’ (Žižek, 2000:23)

The coke marketing team have perhaps taken this critique as a challenge –
they certainly seem to have been reading Žižek’s books[iv] – witness the recent launch of Coke ‘Zero’, literally nothing in a can. Coke’s marketers further revealed their understanding of Lacanian theory with the marketing campaign which accompanied Coke Zero. This campaign portrays Coke Zero as an element of perfection as its malignant elements have been removed; advertising slogans are culturally specific variations of “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides” or “Ridding the world of the negative consequences that limit us all”. As both Žižek and Alenka Zupancic note, the production of commodities without their destructive qualities is an increasingly noticeable element of late capitalism in which the hysterical search for the perfection of desire has reached it’s nadir (Zupancic, 2006: 172). This impossibility – there is no enjoyment, or desire, without hindrance – leads to a position of enjoyment without enjoyment; only the fantasy of enjoyment remains.

The logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it – was also missed by Marx’s in his work on surplus-value and productivity. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – private appropriation of surplus-value – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for the good of all. For Lacan, what Marx missed was that the logic of surplus-value is structurally similar to surplus-jouissance in that the obstacle to full expression is the logic’s very condition of possibility. Let us now turn to Marx’s work on surplus-value.

Surplus-Value: What can the logic of the psyche tell us about the workings of capitalism?

Although Žižek regularly sites the homology between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment, he does not expand upon it, particularly in regards to the manner in which he is using surplus-value[v]. Thus, it is worth us considering the status of surplus-value, both in the traditional Marxist sense and the manner in which it is used by Žižek.

In the strictest Marxist sense of the term, the origin of surplus-value lies in the labour theory of value. According to this theory, labour is the only source of value. Surplus-value is the value produced by the worker over and above the cost of employing the worker; the value created by labour for which the worker receives no equivalent (Wood, 2004:137). For Marx, in contrast to other socialists of his time (see Wood, 2004: 135), there is no exploitation in the appropriation of surplus-value. The capitalist does not purchase the value created by labour (as in the product of labour), but rather living labour power, or labour time. Thus once the labour has sold their labour power, they have no rights to the products of that labour.

In this sense, the capitalist is paying full value to the worker; there is nothing in the transaction between worker and capitalist that suggests the capitalist need pay the worker for the surplus generated by labour[vi]. Indeed, the worker generally benefits more from employment that the capitalist. Where the worker risks starvation, and ultimately death, without income the capitalist is set to lose only a small amount of profit and can easily replace the worker (Wood, 2004). This, of course, is no defence of capitalist society, simply an indication of the horizon of possibility for capitalism. Additionally, and this will be vital for our later argumentation, capitalism is able to appropriate surplus-value because of the bargaining position of the capitalist class – the oversupply of workers[vii] (Wood, 2004:229).

Ultimately, for Marx, the production of surplus-value is the key to capitalist productivity and the expansion of capital through circulation, which ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit; it is surplus-value, based upon the historical over-supply of workers, which is the goal (object) of capital. Essentially, although the worker is fully compensated from their labour-power, the nature of labour as a commodity is that its use value produces greater value than its own; a constitutive surplus which is appropriated by the owner of the means of production (Zizek, 2006b: 57).

In addition, although definitions can only ever be inferred from his texts, Žižek’s usage of surplus-value is extended beyond the labour theory of value. Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value; an element of lack that generates more than itself, and extends it to the operation of capitalism as a totality. In this definition, capitalism is characterised by a dialectical circulation of lack and excess, which corresponds to the relationship within the psyche of the Real and Jouissance.

As such, Žižek’s concept of surplus-value has perhaps more in common with that introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital (Wood, 2004: 230). Here surplus-value comes not only from labour, but also is vitally converted into profit through the circulation of commodities and their consumption, ultimately by workers themselves (Zizek, 2006b: 53). Žižek’s point is that under capitalism there is a commodity that, through exchange, produces more than itself; the natural operation of labour is surplus. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turn money into capital; capital is embedded with a quality which makes it capable of producing a surplus, a surplus we can now label profit.

Because surplus-value acts as the core driver of capitalism, Žižek contends that the production of surplus has the same structural role in capitalism as objet a has in the psyche. Indeed, surplus-value is the objet a of capitalism. However, by labelling surplus-value as objet a, Žižek suggests that there is more to surplus-value (profit) than a simple goal. Rather, profit embodies the logic of objet a, in that it simultaneously operates as the condition of possibility and impossibility of the capitalist logic. Žižek signals this when he describes surplus-value as an inner contradiction within capitalism, but one that operates as the condition of possibility of the system. Indeed, for Žižek capitalism is full of contradictions, of symptoms which simultaneously contradict and allow the ‘official’ operation of capitalism. In doing so, Žižek famously contends that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by;

“Detecting a certain fissure, an asymmetry, a certain pathological imbalance which belies the universalism of bourgeois ‘rights and duties’. This imbalance, far from announcing the ‘imperfect realisation’ of these universal principles – that is, an insufficiency to be abolished by further development – functions as their constitutive moment”(Zizek, 1989: 21).

As an illustration, the notion of freedom, one very dear the heart of the liberal-democratic-capitalist operation, operates as a universal principle. However, there is a specific freedom which subverts all other notions of freedom, yet remains internal to freedom itself. That freedom is the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market, a freedom that allows for all other freedoms (through the production of surplus which allows for under freedoms within capitalism) yet subverts the very notion of freedom; once the worker sells their labour to capital, they are enslaved to the market (1989: 22).

Further to this, the same symptomatic element exists in relation to the production of surplus value. Žižek argues that once labour becomes a commodity – that is, for sale on the market – ‘equivalent exchange becomes its own negation’ (p.22). Although the worker is fully paid for their labour (according to the market), the very form of surplus-value is one of exploitation. The worker is exploited not because they are underpaid, but because of the position in which the worker exists; having to sell their labour as a commodity. For Žižek, Marx’s utopian illusion was the possibility of universality – full and equivalent exchange – could occur without a symptom (p.23). Žižek argues that Marx’s mistake was to “assume that the object of desire (the unconstrained expansion of productivity) would remain even when it was deprived of the cause that propels it (surplus value)” (2000:21).

However, it is not only Marx who believed that capitalism needs to rid itself of these symptoms. The whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradictions, but in doing so only produces more. Capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function, generally either by producing new commodities or selling existing commodities in new markets (Jameson, 1996). Hence, the World Bank acknowledgement of the world’s poor as the ‘customers of the future’ (Moore, 2002). Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis, but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is the basis of capital (Zizek, 1989: 52).

Ultimately, perhaps Coca-Cola and Marx have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by attempting to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause. The consumer is always searching for the perfect commodity, pure jouissance, as opposed to surplus- jouissance, which would finally put an end to desire. This is, of course, not what the subject really wants, but rather the fantasmatic construction of desire which leaves the consumer searching for the ultimate ‘IT’. The constant desire for more is a continual theme in the marketing of commodity, where the product is never the product by itself. It is always offered with something ‘more’ attached, whether that ‘10%’ extra or a competition offer.

Thus, capitalism, like the hysterical psyche of capitalism consumer subjectivity, is never at a state of rest, there is never just value or jouissance; capitalism is a system based on movement (circulation) and the production of excess that hides an ultimate lack. Capitalism’s inherent and disavowed strength is its ability to revolutionise its own conditions, which is to create markets out of its own failings. The threat of global warming and the capitalist response of sustainable development and the ‘Green Dollar’ is perhaps the strongest contemporary example of this logic. This has led to what Alenka Zupancic (Zupancic, 2006 :175) describes as a ‘paradoxical convergence of power and resistance’ where threats to the system are now simply opportunities for profit. It does not take long for 21st marketers to commodify the latest counter-culture movement. Indeed, some would argue that the marketers are generating this culture.

Thus, the structural homology between surplus-value in capitalism and the surplus-jouissance of the psyche can tell us much about the operation of capitalism. In both the surplus is not an excess which is tagged onto the normal state of affairs. Rather, this surplus is the normal state, the cause which drives the excessive balance of the system. Just as in the logic of objet a (the object of surplus-jouissance) in surplus-value there is produced what appears to be a waste, an unaccounted for surplus, in the normal operation of the system (Zupancic, 2006 :162). For Zupancic, surplus-value comes about when this waste is valorised, accounted for, not as waste but as an integral part of the system; profit (170). Thus, in capitalist ideology, there is never surplus; all things are accounted for profit is simply the appropriate return for the investment of capital

What Žižek does not emphasise in this homology is the role of the Real in surplus-value. We have already discussed the operation of the Real in terms of the psyche, both in castration and the Real that continues after the letter, objet a. Conversely, in terms of capitalist political economy and surplus-value, Žižek does not make a strong link to the Real. Elsewhere, however, Žižek does make a strong link between the Real and class as the hitch within the capitalist logic. In order to properly understand the implications of surplus-value/surplus-jouissance, we must integrate the Real in order to extend the homology to the three Lacanian registers, the symbolic (surplus-value), the imaginary (surplus-jouissance) and the Real (class)[viii].

Return of the Real; Class as surplus

The Real is the third modality of surplus to add to the equation. Žižek has previously referred to capitalism as the symbolic Real, in the sense that it is the point to which all symbolisations return; it has hegemonised hegemony. Class as the Real, is more in the sense a lack in the symbolic formula of capitalism and a historical exclusion that founds capitalism. As previously noted, Žižek contends that labour as a commodity is symptomatic of capitalism because it produces exploitation even when the worker is fully paid, simply because they are forced to sell their labour on the market, rather than own the means of production. This latter fact is a symptom, a constitutive flaw within the capitalist formula, what Fink might label R2 or the Real after the letter. That capitalism is able to operate and exploit this fault is something akin to R1, the originary Real upon which the system is founded and must be repressed, that which Marx labelled primitive accumulation.

Although these elements are constitutive of capitalism, capitalist ideology cannot acknowledge this excess, although it is constitutive. For Žižek, this is the role of class. Class is not a positively existing element; rather it is a hitch within capitalism that cannot be integrated into the system. In this sense, class is Real – that which cannot be symbolised. Thus, as well as a lack within the system, class is also an excess in the sense that it is the surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate and as such provides the founding moment of surplus-value. These workers are surplus to capitalist requirements, but not in the same sense of surplus-jouissance or surplus-value, where the surplus is the only attachment. Rather, these people are surplus as waste; they are not strictly required for the operation of capitalism, although, paradoxically it is this waste that allows capitalist surplus to be produced – without this ‘waste’[ix], production wages would not be able to stay at a sustainable level of the continued extension of capitalist profitability. Additionally, given the pressing concerns with environmental degradation the world simply cannot allow for the development of this capitalist waste. Latest research suggests that if the entire world were to consume as we do in New Zealand, a mid-range OECD country, we would need another five planets to support the levels of research consumption.

There is increasingly empirical evidence of this ‘waste’ of humanity, particularly in the build-up of urban slums in Third World cities such as Dhaka, Jakarta, Lagos or Rio de Janeiro, as portrayed in Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s masterpiece, City of God (Cidade de Deus). Mike Davis has suggested that in 2004, for the first time, the urban population of the world will outnumber the rural, creating a huge urban proletariat (Davis, 2004). These landless worker, forced to sell their labour for whatever price, outside of the legal protection of ‘western’ minimum wage laws, constitutive the true motor of capitalism and surplus-value. Yet, as Žižek suggests, these citizens are almost outside of the capitalist space, a wasted lawless horde in the sense of Orwell’s proletariat in 1984. As such the Proletariat operate as a ‘living contradiction’ of capitalist production, a wasted contradiction that capital almost literally feeds off (Zizek, 1999: 225). For Žižek today’s urban slums (proletariat)are the concrete universal of capitalism, the constitutive exception that allows for the coherence of the abstract universal horizon (Zizek, 2006b: 268-9). As such, they hold the possibility (as an element which is incommensurable with the capitalist horizon) of creating a rupture within capitalism.

Is then, the task of radical anti-capitalist politics simply to capture this rogue element in the name of the historical revolutionary Marxist subject? If our earlier discussion has taught us anything, the answer is no. Capitalist surplus excess cannot be tamed, nor integrated into a new form, i.e. Marx’s communism. Instead, the question is, as Žižek suggests;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is here: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity 'as such' outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the mobile of social reproduction? The lesson of the past failures of emancipatory economic projects is clear: it is not enough to demand a different appropriation of the surplus (collective instead of private) while retaining its form. Surplus-value and its capitalist appropriation are two sides of the one coin" (Zizek, 2007b: 55)

Ethics of Drive

The most notable alternative to the capitalist discourse of surplus (desire) is that of drive. In contrast to desire, which posits objet a as its goal, in drive the goal is loss itself; the perpetual circulation around objet a. Rather than the fantasmatic attempts to obtain the object, drive only has an aim, that of movement around the object. Within Lacanian psychoanalysis, the subject of the drive comes at the end, or even beyond analysis. Although Lacan had originally seen desire as somewhat radical, he came to see it as an integral part of the (symbolic) law. The subject of desire is firmly embedded with the Realm of the Other. Instead, he placed his hopes in the subject of drive. Whereas the subject of desire cannot achieve satisfaction because it is weighed down by the Other, the drive always achieves satisfaction, precisely by its own failure (Fink, 1997: 208).

This is not to suggest that the subject of drive is not grammatically structure, some kind of blob, living only for a pleasure obtained through the very failure to obtain satisfaction. It is just that desire no longer plays a role in the dialectic of satisfaction (210). Objet a still exists for the subject of drive, and it is to this object (rather than to the Other) that the subject of drive orientates themselves; the subject recognises the presence of the Other, but does not appeal to it for satisfaction – the subject can finally ‘enjoy their enjoyment’(209-210). Thus, for Lacan, the course of analysis takes the subject from demand, to desire and ends in drive. This change in position, involving the vital move of ‘traversing the fantasy’, brings about a change in the relationship between desire and satisfaction and end of analysis. Yet Lacan, according to Fink, is ultimately unsure of the status of subject within drive.

This ambiguous support for an ‘ethics of drive’ continues amongst contemporary (political) readers of Lacan. Jason Glynos suggests, through a reading of Žižek’s work, that contemporary anti-capitalism needs to exit the realm of desire and the belief in the ultimate existence of the Big Other and enter into an ethics of drive. He finishes he argumentation, however, with the question, ‘What would a community of subjects of the drive look like?’ (Glynos, 2001). Analysis like these give drive a kind of mystical quality, one that can only be explained by the fact that it is not desire.

Likewise Lacanian political theorists Yannis Stavrakakis (Stavrakakis, 1999, 2007) and Alenka Zupancic (Zupancic, 2000) have argued for an ‘Ethics of disharmony’ and the ‘Ethics of the Real’ respectively. Additionally, Žižek, in his earlier work at least, was politically supportive of the ethics of drive. In For They Know Not What They Do, Žižek suggested there were four predominant ethical attitudes; the ethics of hysterical desire, obessional demand and pervert enjoyment. The fourth ethical attitude was the ethics of drive. For Žižek, ‘the status of drive itself is inherently ethical’; Lacan asserted that the subject must not give way to their drive (Zizek, 1991: 272). Žižek goes onto describe the ethics of drive as the “only possibility for the Left to attain a distance on the present and discern the signs of something new” (273).

Yet, latter Žižek comes to reject the possibility of an ethics based upon drive. Arguing against Stavrakakis’ notion of partial enjoyment as a supplement to Ernesto Laclau’s radical democracy. Stavrakakis’ argument (as quoted by Žižek) appears to be pure Lacan;

“The central task in psychoanalysis - and politics - is to detach the objet petit a from the signifier of the lack in the Other /.../, to detach (anti-democratic and post-democratic) fantasy from the democratic institutionalization of lack, making possible the access to a partial enjoyment beyond fantasy. /.../ Only thus shall we be able to really enjoy our partial enjoyment, without subordinating it to the cataclysmic desire of fantasy. Beyond its dialectics of disavowal, this is the concrete challenge the Lacanian Left addresses to us ”(Stavrakakis, 2007: 280-282).

In reply, Žižek states that Stavrakakis is in ‘total contradiction’ with Lacan in reducing objet a to an element of fantasy and suggesting a society beyond objet a (Zizek, 2007a). Žižek goes on to argue that objet a still exists in drive, but with a different relationship to desire; “in the shift from desire to drive, we pass from the lost object to loss itself as an object”. Further to this, Žižek states;

“However, this in no way entails that, in drive, we "really enjoy our partial enjoyment," without the disturbing excess: for Lacan, lack and excess are strictly correlative, the two sides of the same coin. Precisely insofar as it circulates around a hole, drive is the name of the excess that pertains to human being, it is the "too-much-ness" of striving which insists beyond life and death (this is why Lacan sometimes even directly identifies drive with objet a as surplus-jouissance.)”

A society without excess, then, is what is properly utopian. Even an ethics of drive will operate around the constitutive excess of objet a, perhaps more than ever. Žižek has also rejected drive, arguing that it is now the logic of capitalism in its purest form. Whilst, in terms of the hegemonic form of subjectivity amongst capitalist subjects, desire remains predominant, informing the discourse of the hysteric. However, for Žižek, capitalism is structured to operate as drive because the capitalist machinery is engineered only for its own continued expansion. Money becomes an end in itself, rather than being tied to some notion of ‘actual material progress’. Thus, whilst desire is tied to a goal of some kind, drive is only aim as movement and circulation (Zizek, 2006b: 61).

Žižek’s main target here is financial capital and its continual expansion of the circulation of money in which there is no actual goal other than the more money. Currency trading and arbitrage, in which money is bought in one market and quickly sold again in another to take advantage of a temporary misalignment in prices (Moles & Terry, 1997: 19) are examples of this kind of symbolic money-for-money transactions within capitalism. The movement of drive is thus exemplified in financial capital where the goal is circulation and movement around the goal (money for the sake of money) as opposed to surplus-value in desire, which is linked to imaginary desires for notions such as progress, under the guise of commodity fetishism.[x] In this sense, the transgressive elements of drive have certainly disappeared, and this is a major problem for Žižek; how can we revolutionise a system that is already revolutionary?
Žižek may be correct in his description of the pure structure of capitalism adhering the dynamics of drive. Nonetheless, drive always has a relationship to desire in some sense. Although the human-less structure of capital may adhere to the structure of drive, to those involved it still operates as desire. While those embedded in the process, say currency traders, may be aware on some level that money is ultimately empty, they still operate in a discourse of desire, whether to fulfil their personal budget, to get further status or to get a pay raise, at this level capitalism remains driven by desire, even if the resulting structure is only that of drive.

Certainly much of capitalism appears to have lost its attachment to the ideological notions of progress and freedom that supplement it. Rather, developments and commodification appear to occur for their own sake, as opposed to retaining any notion of ‘improving life’. My stove-top is an example of this process. Rather than simple turn knobs to set temperature, the elements are now controlled by a digital system. This system requires to be turned on, the element selected and then set to the appropriate temperature by tapping the electronic buttons several times. It is technology for technology’s sake. Yet it maintains an ideological presence of improving the consumer’s life.

Professional sport is an example of this logic. The financial reality of professional sport is that teams are owned as franchised commodities; the structure of a professional sports team[xi] is no different from that of a fast-food franchise; an owned licence in an overall structure. The purpose of both is profit for the owners; winning is but a by product, although winning and profit are generally mutually accommodating goals. Thus, in professional sport, any notion of the ‘point’ is missing; the teams are not representive a geographical area to any extent. Yet, this is all disavowed. Supporters are a passionate as ever; there is a huge desire for their team to win, to obtain the fantasmatic objet a – along with nationalism and consumerism, sporting passion must be one of the most prominent sites of enjoyment in contemporary society. Some supporters live only for their teams. This passion is well exploited by the club (franchise) with the commodification of the players and game itself in tickets, television rights and merchandise. Brands are highly developed; sports marketing is perhaps the most developed and successful form of marketing. Team identities are created, including colours, logos and slogans, right down to nicknames, which once where organically developed, now have little reference to anything representative of the region[xii].

This despite fans ‘knowing’ the emptiness of the pursuit; the player market is regularly discussed and transfers passionately celebrated. There appears to be a parallax at work here; fans know the team is nothing but a business (and who would support a business; can you imagine fans passionately engaged in the struggles of McDonalds Windsor Park against McDonalds Belmont? Discussing the latest burger figures and the franchises’ requirements in the employment market? ‘We’re weak in fry production – I hear Smith is off contract at Burger King, we need to pick him up!), yet they remain engaged with the team as ‘their’ representatives – geography remains the principal reason for supporting a team, even if none of the players stem from that region. In this sake, even if there is no ‘point’ to professional sport – who cares if this bunch of merchanaries beats that bunch – it matters very much to the people involves. On a structural level, professional sport results in an operation of drive, but it is embodied by desire.

Perhaps sport is a powerful exemplar of our current situation. The actual playing of sport relates to this relationship between drive and desire. Although players maintain a strong desire to win, to obtain objet a, their passion is really in the playing itself, enjoying the process of physical exertion and generally feeling alive; enjoying one’s enjoyment. Without the lure of desire however, for many sportspeople, the enjoyment of drive disappears as well; the passion goes out of the game. It may be that at the level of enjoyment, what we need today is a different relationship to surplus which produces an ethics of drive that goes beyond desire. However, at the level of the economy, of the resulting structure, capitalism and professional sport are already at drive. Perhaps what is required here is a relationship to surplus that is simply beyond analysis. That is, if Žižek’s lesson is that we are resigned to surplus-enjoyment, are we also resigned to a form of political economy based upon surplus-value?

Conclusion – Zupancic?!
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Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Fink, B. (1997). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Havard University Press.
Glynos, J. (2001). 'There is no other of the other' - Symptoms of a decline in symbolic faith, or, Zizek's anti-capitalism. Paragraph, 24(2), 78-110.
Jameson, F. (1996). Five Theses on actually existing Marxism. Monthly Review, 47.
Kay, S. (2003). Zizek: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity.
Miklitsch, R. (1998). Introduction. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Moles, P., & Terry, N. (1997). The Handbook of International Financial Terms. New York: Oxford University Press.
Moore, M. (2002). Globalisation: the impact of the Doha Development Agenda on the free market process. Retrieved 17 March, 2008, from http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/spmm_e/spmm77_e.htm
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the political. London: Routledge.
Stavrakakis, Y. (2007). The Lacanian Left. Albany: SUNY.
Wood, A. W. (2004). Karl Marx (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991). For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. Verso: London.
Zizek, S. (2001). Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (2006a). Objet a in Social Links. In J. Clemens & R. Grigg (Eds.), Reflections on Seminar XVII: Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis (pp. 107-128). Durham: Duke University Press.
Zizek, S. (2006b). The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (2007a). The Liberal Utopia: Against the Politics of Jouissance. Retrieved 30/1/2008, 2008, from www.lacan.com/zizliberal.htm
Zizek, S. (2007b). Multitude, Surplus, and Envy. Rethinking Marxism, 19(1).
Zupancic, A. (2000). Ethics of the real : Kant, Lacan / Alenka Zupancic. London ; New York :: Verso,.
Zupancic, A. (2006). When Surplus Enjoyment Meets Surplus-Value. In J. Clemens & R. Grigg (Eds.), Reflections on Seminar XVII: Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis (pp. 155-178). Durham: Duke University Press.

[i] Lacan made very clear that the link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment is one of homology, a structure link, as opposed to analogy which is a functional link without structure origin
[ii] Evolutionary psychology is perhaps the hegemonic brand of social-psychological analysis for the masses, in no small part because it suggests a degree of certainty to human behaviouir
[iii] Although, as Žižek notes, to define objet a as the which emerges at the point of loss is to stay within the realm of desire, as opposed to drive, which we shall expand upon latter (Zizek, 2006a)
[iv] Previous marketing campaigns – coke ‘Enjoy!’ and ‘Coke is it’ suggest that this is the case
[v] This is a regular criticism of Žižek, that he cites traditional Marxist concepts that appear in contradiction with his Lacan theoretical framework without any indication of the manner in which he is using them
[vi] This just does not stem from a political or legal framework, but rather the economic base; under capitalist political economy this is the only possible just modality of distribution (Wood, 2004: 138)
[vii] The worker is forced to labour, to join the labour force, not forced in the same sense that a slave is forced, but rather because they have no alternative but to sell their labour under the terms of capitalism
[viii] I have made something of a jump here in describing surplus-value as the symbolic and surplus-jouissance as the imaginary, but I will extend on this at a latter date. The link betweent them is by way of a parallax gap.
[ix] A euphenisum if ever their was one
[x] This movement is characterised by the change for C-M-C (The commodity is exchanged for money in order to obtain under commodities) to M-C-M (Money is used to obtain commodities in order to make more money). The latter is certainly the logic of capital, but it operates under the illusion of the former, which carries the ideological illusion of a progression towards the object. This parallax split between the two images of circulation is vital to my understanding of capitalism
[xi] I am making a notable exception of national sports sides
[xii] New Zealand’s first professional sports team, based in Auckland was nicknamed the ‘Football Kingz’. Following a widescale apathy of support for the unsuccessful team, the name was changed to the ‘Knights’, who were equally unsuccessful. Ultimately the team failed and moved to Wellington, becoming the ‘Phoenix’

Surplus- Value and Surplus-Jouissance

2008-03-03T13:41:00.000+13:00

Psychoanalysis and Marxism have a long history as an intellectual and political fusion. The most prominent contemporary theorist in this line is Slavoj Zizek. Zizek does not simply attempt to supply a theory of subjectivity or culture to Marxism, as in so many other combinations of psycho-Marxism. Rather, Zizek considers there to be a fundamental homology between the logics of the Marxist critique of political economy and Lacanian psychoanalysis. This homology is between the Marxist conception of surplus-value and Lacanian surplus-jouissance. This link, whilst regularly alluded to by Zizek, actually stems from Lacan’s 16th Seminar[i]. Lacan equated surplus-value with objet a, the object of surplus-enjoyment, although his concern was more with the psyche of the worker, rather than the structure of capitalism (Fink, 1995: 96). It is in this latter sense that Zizek has brought the link between surplus-value and surplus-jouissance to prominence. This homology adds greatly to our understanding of capitalism. This link suggests that every Marxist critique of the logic of capitalism is always a Lacanian critique, given a few twists. In this sense we can regard surplus-value to be the logic of the capitalist symbolic order under the horizon of capitalism and surplus-jouissance the logic of the imaginary. By adding the Real as the third dimension in this analysis of surplus – the Real qua class struggle or the reserve army of labour – the possibility of subverting capitalism becomes more apparent. Nonetheless, Zizek’s assertion of the constitutive nature of surplus, certainly in the psyche, if not the economy, and his rejection of a ethico-political movement from desire to drive does not bring us any closer to a notion of radical anti-capitalist politics.

Surplus-Value

Although Zizek regularly sites the homology between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment, he does not expand upon it, particularly in regards to the manner in which he is using surplus-value[ii]. Thus, it is worth us considering the status of surplus-value, both in the traditional Marxist sense and the manner in which it is used by Zizek.

In the strictest Marxist sense of the term, the origin of surplus-value lies in the labour theory of value. According to this theory, labour is the only source of value. Surplus-value is the value produced by the worker over and above the cost of employing the worker; the value created by labour for which the worker receives no equivalent (Wood, 2004:137). For Marx, in contrast to other socialists, there is no exploitation in the appropriation of surplus-value. The capitalist does not purchase the value created by labour (as in the product of labour), but rather living labour power, or labour time. Thus once the labour has sold their labour power, thus have no rights to the products of that labour.

In this sense, the capitalist is paying full value to the worker[iii]; there is nothing in the transaction between worker and capitalist that suggests the capitalist need pay the worker for the surplus generated by labour[iv]. Indeed, the worker generally benefits more from employment that the capitalist. Where the worker risks starvation, and ultimately death, without income the capitalist is set to lose only a small amount of profit and can easily replace the worker (Wood, 2004). This, of course, is no defence of capitalist society, simply an indication of the horizon of possibility for capitalism. Additionally, and this will be vital for our later argumentation, capitalism is able to appropriate surplus-value because of the bargaining position of the capitalist class – the oversupply of workers[v] (Wood, 2004:229). Ultimately, for Marx, the production of surplus-value is the key to capitalist productivity and the expansion of capital through circulation, which ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit; it is surplus-value, based upon the historical over-supply of workers, which is the goal (object) of capital[vi].

Zizek's notion of surplus-value is fundamentally similar to Marx, in that he agrees that surplus-value is the object of capital. Conversely, Zizek goes beyond the labour theory of value in his usage of surplus-value, although definitions can only ever be inferred from his texts. Zizek’s concept of surplus-value has perhaps more in common with that introduced by Marx in Volume III of Capital. Here surplus-value comes not only from labour, but also is vitally converted into profit through the circulation of commodities. Zizek’s point is that under capitalism there is a commodity that, through exchange, produces more than itself; the natural operation of labour is surplus. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turn money into capital; capital is embedded with a quality which makes it capable of producing a surplus, a surplus we can now label profit.

Thus, for Zizek, surplus-value is the core driver of capitalism. As such, Zizek contends that the production of surplus has the same structural role in capitalism as objet a has in the psyche. Indeed, surplus-value is the objet a of capitalism. However, by labelling surplus-value as objet a, Zizek suggests that there is more to surplus-value (profit) than a simple goal. Rather, profit embodies the logic of objet a, in that it simultaneously operates as the condition of possibility and impossibility of the capitalist logic. Zizek signals this when he describes surplus-value as an inner contradiction within capitalism, but one that operates as the condition of possibility of the system.

In a similar manner, Zizek describes the ‘contradiction’ between the relations of production and forces of production as that which drives the dynamics of capitalism. Capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function, generally either by producing new commodities or selling existing commodities in new markets. Hence, the World Bank acknowledgement of the world’s poor as the "customers of the future". Thus, the point is that capitalism is never at a state of rest, there is never just value; capitalism is a system based on movement (circulation) and the production of excess. Capitalism’s productivity is based on its instability and the imaginary illusion of jouissance.

For Zizek, Marx’s error was that he believed the obstacle – capitalist appropriation of surplus-value – whilst retaining the benefits of surplus-value. Essentially, Marx thought that capitalist productivity could be transferred to a communism modality of political economy. Zizek argues that Marx’s mistake was to “assume that the object of desire (the unconstrained expansion of productivity) would remain even when it was deprived of the cause that propels it (surplus value)” (2000:21).

Zizek contends that this system of political economy is mirrored in the libidinal economy of the psyche. Here enjoyment is never just enjoyment, it is always imbued with an excess, embodied by objet a, the object and object-cause of desire.

Surplus-jouissance and objet a

Objet a is the object of surplus-enjoyment, or jouissance. Jouissance, often translated into enjoyment, is a fundamental concept of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Jouissance is not simply enjoyment or pleasure; rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering. Fink (1995:60) distinguishes between two orders of jouissance, before (J1) and after the letter (J2).

J1 is the pure unmediated jouissance that is sacrificed with the castrating entry into language. J2 occurs as a substitute for the loss of J1, a compensation that occurs through fantasy in the staging of impossible acts to regain J1 (impossible because the subject cannot return to a time before language). J1 itself is a fantasy creation, produced because of the lack within the symbolic order (maintaining the feeling that there was a time before lack). Because J1 is a creation of language, Zizek contends that there is no jouissance for the subject before j2, surplus-jouissance. Therefore, social analysis should always focus on j2, or surplus-jouissance, rather than seeing it as a secondary effect. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed, the operation of jouissance can only be understand as a relationship between modalities. The story to be told is not that there was a primal jouissance, then after the insertion of the signifier, we are left with only a semblance. The operation is much more complex than this, allowing surplus-jouissance to be embedded as an excesses throughout the symbolic order.

Surplus-jouissance is embodied through objet a. Like surplus-value, objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation (profit being the surplus after production), what Fink labels the Real after the letter (R2). Objet a can be understood as a remainder produced with the breakdown of the unity of jouissance. By clinging to objet a, the subject is able to ignore this division (via fantasy). Yet the subject achieves a certain satisfaction from their suffering. Second order jouissance offers objet a as a substitute for unity, staged by fantasy which gives a sense of coherence to being.

Surplus-jouissance, in its form as a renunciation of jouissance is also a form of the super-ego. The super-ego is a transgressive site of jouissance; we enjoy submitting to laws through the surplus-enjoyment supplied by the super-ego. Super-ego jouissance occurs because the subject makes a forced choice away from pure jouissance and into language. The impossibility of a return is repressed; what is repressed is that the subject never had 'it' in the first place. Through the maintenance of this possibility, a form of guilt is forced upon the subject when it submits to the law. However, as this submission necessarily fails to suture the symbolic order, the more submission is required. It is through fantasy the subject learns to control their access to jouissance and thus structure their desire.

Coca-Cola as reader of Lacan

Zizek describes coca-cola as the perfect embodiment of objet a and as such the ultimate capitalist merchandise. In coke, we have a drink removed of all the objectively necessary properties of a satisfying drink; it provides no nutritional benefit – it certainly does not quench thirst – or provide the ‘satisfied calm’ of an alcoholic beverage. Instead, all that is left is the mysterious ‘X’, the surplus over enjoyment that is characteristic of the commodity. Zizek describes diet-coke as the final step in this process – the commodification of nothing itself – since the caffeine that gives coke its distinctive taste has been removed. ‘We drink the nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property that is in effect merely an envelope of a void’ (Zizek, 2000:23)

The coke marketing team have perhaps taken this as a challenge; they certainly seem to have been reading Zizek’s books[vii], with the recent launch of coke ‘Zero’, literally the embodiment of zero. Coke show’s its understanding of Zizek’s theory with its accompanying marketing campaign, which portray Coke Zero as perfection as it’s malignant elements have been removed; advertising slogans are culturally specific variations of “Why can't all the good things in life come without downsides” or “Riding the world of the negative consequences that limit us all”. Ultimately, perhaps coke and Marx have more in common that one might think, both attempting utopia by attempting to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause.

How can we use this to understand capitalism?

- Symbolic order is established through surplus-value
- Imaginary through surplus-enjoyment and super-ego
- The Real?

The Real is the third modality of surplus to add to the equation. I am using the Real in the sense of holes in the symbolic formula of capitalism, but also in terms of the historical exclusions that found capitalism; an excess of workers have to sell their labour-power as a commodity on the market. This latter fact is a symptom, a constitutive flaw within the capitalist formula, what Fink might label R2 or the Real after the letter. That capitalism is able to operate and exploit this fault is something akin to R1, the originary Real upon which the system is founded and must be repressed. Capitalism cannot operate whilst being historically aware of its primal accumulation that produces the vulnerabilities that allow the labour market to operate. It is this surplus of workers – Marx’s reserve army of labour – which produces the vulnerability that allows the labour market to operate and as such provides the founding moment of surplus-value. Remember, for Marx, capitalist exploitation does not lie in the appropriation of surplus-value by the owners of capital, but rather the historical situation that allows this circumstance.

How can we use this to act against capitalism?

- Against Marx and his historical notion of revolution and utilising capitalist productivity for collective ownership
- So, what are the options
o Conservative
§ Acceptance of the exploitation required by capitalism
o Liberal
§ Minimise exploitation through democratic institutions
o Utopia
§ (Marxist) remove exploitation altogether within the existing shape of political economy
o Radical
§ Change the very horizon of political economy

If Zizek’s lesson, seen in his rejection of Stavrakakis argument for radical democracy and a logic of partial enjoyment, is that we are resigned to surplus-enjoyment, are we also resigned to a form of political economy based upon surplus-value?

Zizek has rejected drive as a mode of economy (moving away from surplus-value as a modality of desire) suggesting that financial capital, and other forms of ‘pure capitalism’, operate around a system of drive. Here the goal is no longer profit, but circulation. However, as Zizek reminds us in his critique of Stavrakakis ‘ethics of partial enjoyment’, the move from desire to drive does not bring with it the elimination of objet a (profit) but rather a change in relationship. Rather than a direct, yet imaginary, movement towards the object, in drive the goal is the circulation around the object. The movement of drive is thus exemplified in financial capital where the goal is circulation and movement around the goal (money for the sake of money) as opposed to surplus-value in desire, which is linked to imaginary desires for notions such as progress, under the guise of commodity fetishism.[viii]

What can be done? According to Zizek;

"The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is here: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity 'as such' outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the mobile of social reproduction? The lesson of the past failures of emancipatory economic projects is clear: it is not enough to demand a different appropriation of the surplus (collective instead of private) while retaining its form. Surplus-value and its capitalist appropriation are two sides of the one coin"

Is this the question that will come to orientate my thesis?

[i] Lacan made very clear that the link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment is one of homology, a structure link, as opposed to analogy which is a functional link without structure origin
[ii] This is a regular criticism of Zizek, that he cites traditional Marxist concepts that appear in contradiction with his Lacan theoretical framework without any indication of the manner in which he is using them
[iii] Zizek acknowledges this point (2006, p.57)
[iv] This just does not stem from a political or legal framework, but rather the economic base; under capitalist political economy this is the only possible just modality of distribution (Wood, 2004: 138)
[v] The worker is forced to labour, to join the labour force, not forced in the same sense that a slave is forced, but rather because they have no alternative but to sell their labour under the terms of capitalism
[vi] This is pure Marxist critique; the question for me to address (and this requires a strong knowledge of Marx and Marxism, is how to understand this economic critique through a psychoanalytic lens; does anything change?
[vii] Previous marketing campaigns – coke ‘Enjoy!’ and ‘Coke is it’ suggest that this is the case
[viii] This movement is characterised by the change for C-M-C (The commodity is exchanged for money in order to obtain under commodities) to M-C-M (Money is used to obtain commodities in order to make more money). The latter is certainly the logic of capital, but it operates under the illusion of the former, which carries the ideological illusion of a progression towards the object. This parallax split between the two images of circulation is vital to my understanding of capitalism