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.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
On the homology betweeen surplus-value and surplus-jouissance
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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[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’
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?!
Davis, M. (2004). Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat. New Left Review, 26(Mar Apr 2004).
Evans, D. (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Brunner-Routledge.
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’
Monday, March 03, 2008
Surplus- Value and Surplus-Jouissance
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
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
Monday, February 04, 2008
Thesis update: Confirmation document
1. Field of Inquiry
My thesis is broadly positioned within the field of political psychoanalysis. This field has since the 1990s been dominated by Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian psychoanalyst and social theorist. Žižek’s thought builds upon the work of post-Freudian psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. Whilst Lacan has been Žižek’s central influence, his work remains remarkably eclectic. As well as Lacan, Žižek is also a reader of German Idealist philosopher Georg Hegel and takes guidance from various forms of Marxism, most notably Leninism. These influences have meant that Žižek’s work, and political psychoanalysis as a whole, has become a wide ranging discipline. While this has allowed its influence to be projected into a number of spheres, political psychoanalysis, at least of the Žižekian ‘brand’, has not been able to develop a settled or hegemonic position. The instability of political psychoanalytic philosophy has left a gap in the literature in regards to political action, amongst other things. It is this gap, particularly in regards to the critique of capitalism, which I am seeking to examine.
Psychoanalysis as a properly political tool has only been a relatively recent phenomenon, one that is characterised by Žižek’s work, although others before him, such as Fredric Jameson, deserve acknowledgement[i]. Psychoanalysis was originally developed as a form of clinical analysis, firstly by Sigmund Freud and then Lacan. Lacan re-read Freud, adding a theory of language which built upon the insights of both structuralism and post-structuralism. Lacan’s move to place language – as a social mechanism – at the centre of the psyche, allowed the potential for psychoanalysis to move beyond the clinical and into social and political analysis. However, although Lacan began to address psychoanalysis as a mode of social analysis in his later thought[ii], it has been primarily through the work of Žižek that Lacanian theory has become recognised as a legitimate tool for socio-political analysis[iii].
Conversely, psychoanalytic political theory has not sought to strictly correlate social life with the clinical patient, analysing the social as a patient who might, for example, be suffering from collective hysteria. Rather, because of the constitutive influence of language, the two – the individual and the social, the subject and object – are inseparable; the individual can only come into being through integration into language and the hegemonic discourses which structure social life. Likewise, social life is constituted by the presence of individual bodies; bodies which experience themselves only through language and a bodily excess which Lacan labelled jouissance. In turn these experiences add to the body of language which Lacan conceptualised as ‘the discourse of the Other’. Operating at the intersection of the body and socio-political life – a gap that Žižek, following Lacan, labels the subject – psychoanalysis has become a properly sociological discourse.
This gap produces a radical incompleteness within both the psyche and the social, a constitutive incompleteness which allows for movement, avoiding the isomorphism that would have arisen from a straight correlation. Lacan’s insistence on this negative ontology as the constitutive feature of the human condition does not allow his formulation of psychoanalysis to fit easily into traditional political philosophy. Traditional political philosophy focuses on positivised normative positions which allow for the postulation of conceptions of shared social life. Instead, as I shall expand on in Section Two, Lacanian political philosophy, particularly that practiced by Žižek, emphasises the illusory nature of these conceptions.
Žižek takes this insight further through his reading of Hegel’s dialectics. He insists that not only is every political position based on an illusion (language being ultimately contingent and requiring partial imaginary fixations to achieve meaningful stability) but these illusionary horizons of understanding are constituted upon a disavowed exclusion. Therefore, not only are any political formations which postulate positions of universality necessarily illusionary, they are also violently exclusive. The political connotations of such an insight remain unsettled. Debate still rages over whether psychoanalysis is politically conservative – because of its rejection of the possibility of utopia and progressive politics in its positivising form – or radical – if psychoanalysis reveals that nothing is natural, that anything is possible, in particular the revolution of the horizon of understanding[iv].
Thus Žižek’s work suggests that the value of psychoanalysis as a modality of political philosophy does not lie in the production of collective illusions, but rather in their deconstruction[v]. Where others argue that Lacanian psychoanalysis is not a properly political discourse because it is unable to produce an ideological conception of shared social life (Homer, 1996: 14), Žižek contends that the political utility of psychoanalysis goes beyond such conceptions[vi]. Psychoanalysis is political because of its emphasis on negative ontology – psychoanalysis examines the manner in which inherently contingent social constructions achieve relative stability. More than that though, psychoanalysis also exposes that which is not contingent in social constructions; the disavowed exclusions upon which social constructions are founded.
Although Žižek’s work has consistently followed this Lacanian logic of social analysis, his focus has not always been overtly political. In his first English-language text The Sublime Object of Ideology, Žižek stated that his aim is to ‘serve as an introduction to the fundamental concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis…accomplish a ‘return to Hegel’…[and] contribute to the theory of ideology’(Zizek, 1989: 7). Indeed, much of Žižek’s early work focuses on ideological analyses, particularly of popular culture (Zizek, 1991b, 1997, 1992) although these texts often had a political edge (see Zizek, 1991a).
I Although Žižek has focused more on capitalism in his later texts, his interest in Marxism has been evident since his initial work. As an exemplar, in the opening chapter of The Sublime Object of Ideology, he claims that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian notion of the symptom. Žižek’s Marxism will be discussed in detail in the following sections, as it constitutes a core element of my thesis. It was not until the publication of The Ticklish Subject in 1999, however, that Žižek’s work became explicitly political. Additionally, Žižek began identifying global capitalism as his primary political target. In the introduction to this text, Žižek stated;
“While this book is philosophical in its basic tenor, it is first and foremost an engaged political intervention, addressing the burning question of how we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal-democratic multi-culturalism”(Zizek, 1999:4)
Thus, the central emphasis of my thesis correlates most strongly with Žižek’s later work, although some of his most interesting theoretical thought was established in his earlier books, particularly The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) and For They Know Not What They Do (1991).
As Žižek’s work has become more popular (and controversial, owing largely to his political turn), a range of secondary theorists and critics have developed around him. Most prominent amongst these commentators are Glyn Daly, Jodi Dean and Yannis Stavrakakis. Žižek has also become involved in a long running dialogue with post-Marxist discourse theorist and one time ally, Ernesto Laclau[vii]. Žižek has also been the subject of a rush of (often critical) introductory texts, including those by Butler (2005), Dean (2006), Kay (2003), Myers (2003), Parker (2004), Sharpe (2004) and a collaboration between Daly and Žižek (2004). Additionally a number of edited volumes have been published (Boucher, Glynos, & Sharpe, 2005; Bowman & Stamp, 2007; R. Butler & Stephens, 2005, 2006; Wright & Wright, 1999) and a online journal, the International Journal of Žižek Studies, was established in 2007[viii].
2. Conceptual Framework
My thesis is driven by a number of theoretical convictions. These convictions stem from a commitment to Lacanian psychoanalysis, as conceived by Žižek. In my work thus far, and in the remainder of the thesis, I will continue to interpret and advance Žižek’s thought, but I believe that the thesis will remain within the broad field determined by Žižek – with the notable exception of Question Two (political action against capitalism), as detailed below in Section Four. There are three central Žižekian categories that structure my thought. These categories are as follows;
- Lacan’s negative ontology and the Real and Jouissance
- Dialectical materialism and universality
- Ideological Fantasy
I will discuss each in turn.
Lacan’s negative ontology and the Real
Lacanian ontology positions ‘lack’ as the fundamental element of the human condition. Lack is produced because language creates a mediating barrier between the subject and the world of things, effectively ‘castrating’ the subject upon entry into the symbolic order. Any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which language refers. Lacan called this gap the Real[ix]. The Real is not only lack, it is also excess. The Real exists as excess because of the manner in which castration, the source of lack, is itself repressed. As a consequence of that repression, the subject is caught in a condition of seeking to regain the absent, but impossible fullness, which existed for them before entering language ‘before the letter’. Lacan called this state Jouissance.
Jouissance is a troubling kind of pleasure; because it represents both the possibility and impossibility of returning to the Real. This paradoxical state is maintained by the presentation to the subject of various objects that can operate as substitutes for the primal lack, known by Lacan as objet a or the empty signifier. In an alternative mode, rather than being presented as objects that can suture lack, a range of objects emerge that come to be postulated as being responsible for thwarting the subject’s quest to achieve a condition that is without lack, as such they are posited as causing the negativity that is inherent in the social. These objects are antagonisms and symptoms, which, despite their presentation within the social as elements that are to be eliminated, are actually sites of enjoyment.
Universality
Žižek’s work on universality represents the core elements of my concepual framework. Žižek splits the idea of universality into an abstract and a concrete form (producing an abstract universal and a concrete universal). The abstract universal provides the hegemonic imaginary horizons – the signifiers and images the support any concept of shared social life – that people use to guides their actions, e.g. the concept of individual freedom or that of human rights. This universal imaginary stands in for the lack that constitutes the social domain. The abstract universal is normally based around an empty signifier, or an objet a, which in Lacanian terms provides a suture for that primal lack and, because of the sense of fullness that it gives, provides the subject with jouissance.
In contrast to the condensing effect of the abstract horizon, the universal exception acts as a dislocating factor again this horizon. The exception, known as the concrete universal, lies on the ‘flip-side’ of the parallax of universality, being ‘the other’ to the abstract universal. In this sense of it being the ‘flip-side’ of the coin, there is no connection between the abstract and concrete universals, no symbolic point of translation. Vitally, however, they nevertheless remain linked as a totality. Although the concrete universal exists as the singular exception to the universal horizon, at the same time this exception comes to exceed that horizon; it is necessary for the continued functioning of the abstract universal.
The absolute poverty of many Third world workers is an example of the concrete universal. These workers, not so much those who toil in sweatshops, but those outside of sweatshops – the reserve army of unemployed workers whose presence allows for the continuation of sweatshop conditions – are necessary for the efficient functioning of capitalism and its abstract universal horizons. These horizons, which in capitalism we may consider to be structured under such notions as ‘wealth’ and ‘progress’, require the presence – and most likely death – of these workers, yet this condition cannot be acknowledged within capitalist ideology; it is the concrete universal – the exception which represents the unbearable Truth of the abstract universal horizon.
Because abstract horizons rely on the exclusion of particular elements (they being ‘the exception’ to those abstract horizons) for their stability, strong tension exists between the exception (the concrete universal) and the abstract universal horizon. However, as no means exist for translating between the two, this tension comes out through the effect that the Real has upon the abstract universal.
The irresolvable nature of the difference between the two modalities of universality gets enclosed within, and thus occluded by, a particular element, the symptom. The symptom is the link between the two areas of analytical investment for a political approach drawing upon psychoanalysis; the abstract universal imaginary and the concrete universal. Within the abstract universal, the symptom embodies the universal exception and thus the Real. As such, the domestication of this potentially dislocating Real element in the symptom is vital for the smooth functioning of the abstract universal.
Yet, despite the disturbing presence of the symptom, its existence is still necessary for the functioning of the universal horizon. The symptom keeps a distance between the universal imaginary and the contradiction between the fantasmatic postulation of the posivitity of the social and the inherent negativity of the Real. On the other hand the presence of the symptom creates a gap within the totality of universality, revealing the presence of the Real and the concrete universal. Thus whilst symptoms are enjoyed, they are also potentially the cause of anxiety and dislocation
Ideological Fantasy
Ideology and fantasy are the main drivers through which the symptom is firstly acknowledged and then domesticated. Together they build the subject’s sense of social and psychic coherence, belonging to the Lacanian register of the imaginary. Fantasy, a modality of the imaginary, provides an unconscious supplement of jouissance which acts as the base for the operation of ideology. This operation is known as ideological fantasy, the discursive strategy by which an illusory jouissance is obtained. This possibility relies on ideological fantasy externalising the symptomatic elements which threaten the abstract universal, but also the maintenance of these symptoms.
The reconstruction of ideology has been a vital move in psychoanalytic thought. Ideology had been predominantly presented in modernist thought as distinct from ‘reality’ in the sense that it was an illusory appearance as opposed to essence, at which modernism was driving. For this reason, with the advent of post-structuralist thought and the related post-modern journey into relativism, ideology as a concept was rejected (Stavrakakis, 1997: 118-122). Through an operation of determinate reflection in which the very negation of ideology has become its positive condition, Lacanian theory has transcended these definitions of ideology and has rehabilitated the term. Ideology stills operates as misrecognition, but of a different nature as ideology is transferred from the epistemological to the ontological (Glynos, 2001: 192). Rather than a distinction between reality and ideology, ideology is seen as the guarantor of the consistency of the social; there is no reality without ideology. Because all discourses are ultimately dislocated and lacking, ideology provides the role of covering this lack, and hence the contingent political nature of any such ideological construction (2001: 191). Thus through ideology the subject suffers from misrecognition of the negative ontology of the social (Stavrakakis, 1997: 123).The key role of ideology in the construction of normality, it can thus be surmised, is to include and pacify the symptom through its staging of the symptom within fantasy formations to which the subject holds. It is the symptom that disrupts the consistency of the social and thus the presence of the symptom must be negated (1997: 128). Paradoxically, in order to achieve this, the symptom must be included in the ideological fantasy of the abstract universal as a point of enjoyment. As Glyn Daly states “The central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through simultaneously producing the ‘threat’ to that closure” (Daly, 1999a: 220). The fantasmatic construction, and deconstruction, of the symptom is of vital political importance.
3. Methodology
A theoretical thesis such as mine does not have a methodology in the same sense that an empirical thesis might. If my thesis can be said to have a methodology, it is as an extension of my conceptual framework. That said, I do have an approach to the analysis of social forms which will be applied throughout the thesis, in particular in regards to Question One (see Section Four). This approach is perhaps less of a methodology and more of a ‘discursive strategy’ for analysis. The difference is not merely semantic, but rather seeks to avoid the postivising nature of fixed methodological positions.
The discursive strategy relies heavily on Žižek’s approach to the political and philosophy in general as outlined in The Parallax View (Zizek, 2006). Žižek describes his approach as being a ‘short-circuit’[x]. A short circuit approach is a critical reading of a political power apparatus such that the hidden underside of its discursive expression is revealed, through which the apparatus functions. Hence; “(T)he reader should not simply have learned something new; the point is rather to make them aware of another – disturbing - side of something they knew all the time” (2006: ix). Žižek believes, and it will be the position adopted throughout my thesis, that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the privileged instrument of the short-circuit approach, although it is necessary to note that a short-circuit relies heavily on Hegelian dialectical logic.The ‘short-circuit’ approach aims to ‘practice’ concrete universality by confronting a universal with its ‘unbearable example’ (2006:13). This is the core orientation at the heart of the argumentation in this thesis; the identification of the internal fault points within a political formation. These internal limit points -symptoms- can be revealed as constitutive of the universal horizon constructed by the discourse and thus a concrete universal.
In order to produce a short-circuit analysis, one cannot simply interpret the discursive field. Rather, as Stavrakakis suggests (1997:129), the role of critical discourse is to deconstruct the fantasmatic background that sutures the social and to find the symptomatic elements that signal the internal point of failure – the limit point – of the abstract imaginary. Similarly, Žižek contends “(T)he aim of the critique of ideology is the analysis of an ideological edifice, is to extract this symptomatic kernel which the official, public, ideological text simultaneously disavows and needs for its undisturbed functioning” (1996:3).
As a consequence of the fantasmatic background of a universal edifice, short-circuit critique comes to involve two important moves. The first is to reveal the contingency of every social construction, to demonstrate that reality is neither natural nor positive. The second is to consider the manner in which an ideology grips its subjects; the operation by which political formations maintain their stability, despite this apparent contingency. The substance that achieves this outcome, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, is jouissance.
It is this short-circuit approach, along with the previously detailed conceptual framework, which will direct my theoretical investigations throughout the course of the thesis. This will be particularly reflected in regards to my first question, where I will seek to understand the contours of global capitalism by highlighting the symptomatic kernels that are disavowed from capitalism, as well as the ideological structures and economies of enjoyment (jouissance) that are in operation within capitalism.
4. Core Research Questions
In my thesis, I investigate two fundamental questions, whose articulation has been influenced by my engagement with the work of Žižek;
What is signified by ‘capitalism’?
Upon what basis might capitalist organisation be most effectively challenged?
The conditions of possibility for these two questions themselves lie within the following theoretical line of inquiry;
What are the prospects for Marxist theory and political action after the ‘turn to language’, in particular Lacan’s conception of ontology?
I will discuss each of these questions below.
Question 1: What is signified by ‘capitalism’? A critical Žižekian theory of capitalism
In this question I apply Žižek’s conceptual framework for the purpose of generating a theory of capitalism. This theory does not seek to wholly describe or map capitalism, but rather to identify the core structural elements that allow us to identify the signifier ‘capitalism’[xi]. I believe that this question is an original endeavour, moreover such an identification is an academic requirement for theoretical ‘rigour’ and one that is vital for identifying the coordinates for the debate in Question 2.
A thorough and systematic analysis of capitalism has not occurred within the coordinates of Lacanian theory. There have been some notable discussions of capitalism from a broadly psychoanalytic perspectives, most salient of this Michael Hardt and Antionio Negri’s Empire(2000) and Gilles Deleuzes and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (1977). I will engage with these texts within my thesis, but neither has achieved lasting academic or political status. Nor do they work from the same Lacanian or Žižekian framework in which my thesis is situated.
Žižek has come the closest to producing an analysis, particularly through his work on Marxism[xii]. At various moments throughout his oeuvre Žižek produces ‘ad hoc’ analyses of capitalism often as an illustration of an element of Marxist theory or as part of a larger analysis. From this, one can piece together a rough Žižekian theory of capitalism, although it is not systematic. Matthew Sharpe, a commentator on Žižek, produced an interesting analysis of Žižek’s conception of capitalism, asking whether Žižek did indeed have a theory of capitalism. He concluded that whilst Žižek calls for such a theory, he often hesitates in his critiques of capitalism, either making ad hoc analyses, ‘journalistic’ comments or directing the reader to another source. Sharpe contends that whilst these forms of analysis may be at times interesting, they have little in common with Žižek’s Lacanian framework (Sharpe, 2004:196-7). Thus the literature remains open for a Lacanian or Žižekian analysis of capitalism. Indeed, I believe, with Sharpe, that if Žižek continues to cite capitalism as the core target of his political and theoretical endeavour, such a theory is necessary.
The second rationale for selecting this question stems from Žižek’s conceptual framework, which will be discussed in more detail in Section Two. This framework has the potential to consider capitalism in a manner which subverts its understanding of itself. Under the hegemonic capitalist logic, a logic which is shared by positivistic social science, elements which appear strictly external to capitalism are considered to be outside of the influence of capitalism. Third world poverty, as an illustration, is not considered to be a necessary element of capitalism. Rather, these economies are considered to be outside of capitalism; they are poor because they are not capitalist enough. Such is the logic of the term ‘developing economy’. In contrast, Žižek asserts that every ideology is constituted by an exclusion which is necessarily disavowed; it cannot occur within the terms of the hegemonic horizon. Taking this logic further, with the assistance of Marxist analysis, one can consider that Third World poverty is necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. Capitalism may not have explicitly or directly created this poverty but it does require it for its own reproduction.
If developing countries were to become fully developed, taking on the levels of consumption of a mid-range developed economy such as New Zealand, official estimates from the New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) suggests that another five planets would be required to support the necessary levels of resource consumption (PCE, 2005). Additionally, in order to keep costs of production down, capitalism requires workers of the Third World to remain at subsistence wages. These wages are able to stay low because of the over supply of workers in these economies.
This is the true horror of capitalism, the disavowed exclusion which is constitutive of the ideology. For sweatshops to exist, and they are a historically constant element of capitalism[xiii], there has to be an oversupply of workers for employed workers to accept their working conditions; if they refuse to work, there is always another from the ‘reserve army’ to take their place. This excess, the unemployed sweatshop worker, the poorest of the poor, are the disavowed foundation of capitalism, but also its motor.
One can fairly easily extend this logic as part of a Lacanian theory of capitalism If capitalism is an empty signifying system, one that can reproduce itself in the name of profit in an infinite number of cultural contexts, then these excluded workers, which we can roughly label ‘class’, and which take the place of the Real becoming what Žižek calls (following Hegel) the concrete universal.[xiv] If this is the case, the final element of the three Lacanian ‘registers’ is liberal democracy, which functions in the place of the imaginary register. Liberal democracy, with its cousin, multi-culturalism, provides the imaginary element of global capitalism; it is capitalism in its more palatable form. Indeed the signifier ‘capitalism’ is rarely invoked as the signifier of the western system of society. There appears to be something disturbing in the term; one could never use it as the justification of a political action. The Bush administration could use democracy as reason for invading Iraq, or even national security, certainly within the United States. To cite capitalism, however, would be hugely controversial.
This is not to suggest, however, that capitalism is somehow considered to be the enemy of the western people. If belief is best revealed through behaviour rather than ideals, then capitalism is at the very core of western society through the performance of consumption. Consumption, as the fetishism of commodities, acts as what Žižek refers to as the ‘spontaneous consciousness of ideology’ (Zizek, 1994: 14); that is, consumption shapes, and has become, our common sense construction of the world.
Finally, I believe it is necessary to produce a detailed understanding of global capitalism in order to properly investigate the second of my enquiries: the political possibilities for radical action against capitalism. By understanding the structure of global capitalism, we are better positioned to understand both the reasons why we must act against capitalism and the potential opportunities, and dead ends, for radical political action.
Thus I feel the question ‘What is signified by Capitalism? , is a particularly valuable one. It is, I believe that the position from which I am investigating this question makes it an original enquiry, but one that does not require much of an extension of the Žižekian conceptual framework, rather its application to a new area.
If this is the case, however, we must consider why this question has not been previously asked and answered. There are two especially salient reasons. Firstly, Žižek is notoriously erratic in his work. He rarely systematically reflects on his objects of inquiry or enters into substantive concrete analysis in any depth. Thus, to some extent this section of my thesis would be doing Žižek’s ‘dirty work’. Although, of course, this work will be completed in a critical lens, rather then attempting to parrot and reproduce Žižek. While Žižek’s work provides an insightful conceptual framework for understanding capitalism, it is a framework that I have always interpreted in my own manner and a framework which encourages such interpretations.
Additionally, Žižek and other theorists working within post-foundational social theory are well aware of the epistemological problems that stem from attempting to name and reify an object. Such is the issue with asking the question ‘What is capitalism?’ One can never fully ‘map’ any object; any representation will never be fully representative. Nevertheless, I would not like to fall into a refusal to identify an object because of the necessary imperfections of such an identification. I do not wish to explicitly positivise capitalism, however, in order to properly critique an object it is a theoretical necessity to understand it, even if that understanding necessary reproduces the limitations of language.
Question 2. Upon what basis might capitalist organisation be most effectively challenged?[xv]
Building from the previous question, in this question I seek to uncover, evaluate and prescribe the available actions against capitalism. This is a much more demanding task than Question 1, one without a readily available solution[xvi]. The question of ethics and normativity in relation to political action is one that has plagued socio-political psychoanalytic theory (see Bellamy, 1993; Brockelman, 2003; Browning, 1991; Daly, 1999b; Devenney, 2001; Homer, 1996; Laclau, 2000; Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2005, 2006; Stavrakakis, 1999; Zupancic, 2000, 2006).
Žižek, following Lacan, refuses to posit any kind of normative position. Instead, his political interventions consist of ‘short-circuit’ critiques aimed at unveiling the disavowed foundations of ideology (see Section Three). This position models that of the Lacanian ethics of psychoanalysis, which force the subject into an encounter with the Real and the Truth of their own position. Lacanian psychoanalytic ethics do not seek to eradicate the gap between the symbolic and Real (for example, of attempting to bring the exception into existence), but rather come to terms with this fundamental separation and acknowledging the constitutive status of this exception (Zizek, 1989: 3).[xvii]
Some theorists utilising Lacan have sought to develop political and ethical positions steaming from Lacan, such as Stavrakakis’s ‘Beyond the ethics of harmony’ (Stavrakakis, 1999), Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s ‘Radical Democracy’(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) project and Laclau’s more recent articulations of Populism (Laclau, 2005, 2006) and Alenka Zupancic’s ‘Ethics of the Real’(Zupancic, 2000).Whilst these points provide some valuable insights, none have gripped either the political or theoretical arenas, nor have they been applied to capitalism or political in any form.
This section is by far the most open of any of the thesis and I expect that my understanding of the issues involved will expand rapidly with my knowledge of the literature. Nonetheless, it remains an important, if not THE important question to answer
Question 3. What, after the turn to language, is the value of Marxist theory for the critique of capitalist political economy and radical politics?
This question underpins both of the previous questions and as such is at the core of my theoretical inquiry. My conceptual framework (see Section Two) is dominated by psychoanalytic theory but seeks to engage with Marxist theory in order to produce a critique of global capitalism. The core dilemma with this fusion is, ‘If we accept the ontological commitments and implications of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory – most notably the effect of the Real and the associated Lacanian logic of the signifier – can Marxism, or at least the Marxist tradition, be used as an interpretive, critical or normative framework?
This question reflects on both questions in different ways. As will be expanded further in Section Five, Žižek has utilised and interpreted a number of Marxist concepts through his Lacanian/Hegelian framework. These include commodity fetishism, ideology, class and the crucial link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment. Žižek also credits Marx with inventing the Lacan notion of the symptom (Zizek, 1989). These concepts, however, are dominated by their psychoanalytic conception which has left critics with the role of questioning in what sense notions like class are in any way Marxist (Sharpe, 2004)[xviii]. Nonetheless, as suggested in Section Five, Žižek’s combination of ‘psycho-Marxism’ does produce some intriguing possibilities for the critique of capitalist political economy where traditional Marxist categories, given a Lacanian twist, open up new possibilities for analysis.
Yet Žižek conception of psycho-Marxism remains fundamentally Lacanian, predicated upon Lacan’s negative ontology. This negative ontology is at odds with Marxist political economy, particularly in terms of political practice. For Žižek, Marx’s key error is that he thought that he could remove the symptomatic aspects of the capitalist mode of production (class) and replace them with a socialist and ultimately communist mode of political economy, whilst maintaining the same levels of productivity. Žižek contends that what appears to be an obstacle (private property and profit) to the full realisation of economic productivity, is actually the inherent condition (Zizek, 1989: 53). Žižek is subject to no such imaginary illusions. As such, he takes little guidance from Marx in terms of political action. That said, Žižek has (although less often in his recent work) turned to Lenin as an example of the Lacanian Act and has even evoked Stalin, if he is in a particularly cantankerous mood (Zizek, 2001, 2002a, 2002b).
Thus, it appears that psycho-Marxism (which has a long history, as discussed in Section Five), has much potential for understanding the structures of capitalist ideology –
certainly more than its cousin, post-Marxist ‘disco-Marxism’[xix], as practiced by Laclau. Yet, when it comes to political action, it appears that Marxism has little to offer psychoanalytic theory.
5. Literature Review
Because of difficulties formalising my research question(s), I have not conducted a literature review around these questions to the depth I would prefer[xx]. Instead my work has focused predominately on Žižek’s interpretations of Marxism. That focus will be reflected in this section. However, as can be noted in Sections Six and Seven, I do plan to thoroughly cover the history of both disciplines individually and their fusion into ‘psycho-Marxism’.
Attempts to combine psychoanalysis and Marxism into a viable explanatory and prescriptive political project have a long history, beginning with the ‘Freudian Marxism’ of theorists such as Wilhelm Reich, Siegfried Bernfeld, Erich Fromm, and Paul Federn. Following these somewhat vulgar attempts at fusion, which focused on supplementing Marxism with a Freudian theory of subjectivity, the Frankfurt school developed a neo-Marxist integration of Freudian psychoanalysis (Miklitsch, 1998: 228). The Frankfurt school theorists sought to supplement Marxism with other intellectual movements, most notably psychoanalysis, from the 1930s in order to respond to the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in the face of the continued presence and morphing shape of capitalism (Sharpe, 2004: 10). In particular, the Frankfurt school turned to psychoanalytic conceptions of culture to explain the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. As Žižek states;
“ In the history of Marxism, the reference to psychoanalysis played a precise strategic role: psychoanalysis was expected to “close the gap” by explaining why, despite the presence of ‘objective’ conditions for the revolutionary transformation, individuals willingly persisted in their enslavement to the ruling ideology” (Zizek, 1998: 235)
If this could be described as the first phase of ‘psycho-Marxism’, according to Miklitsch, the second phase is dominated by Louis Althusser’s structuralist revision of Marxism. Althusser’s return to Marx through psychoanalysis was the first to be dominated by Lacan, rather than Freud. As such, it cultivated a re-reading of Freud as well, framed in Lacanian terms. Lacan had already re-read Freud apres-coup via the turn to language of the latter half of the 20th century, characterised by the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. The focus on language as a structuring element of the human psyche has made psychoanalysis a necessarily sociological investigation, one that could be integrated with Marxism not by way of adding a theory of the psyche, as in Freudian Marxism, but rather as an equal contribution to a theory of intersubjectivity.
Despite these developments, Psycho-Marxism in all its forms has not been able to envisage a movement beyond capitalism, which does not fall pray to the traps of totalitarian socialism, as Žižek himself acknowledges;
"This is our situation today; after the breakdown of the Marxist notion that capitalism itself generates the force that will destroy it in the guise of the proletariat, none of the critics of capitalism, none of those who describe so convincingly the deadly vortex into which the so-called process of globalisation is drawing us, has any well-defined notion of how we can get rid of capitalism. In short, I am not preaching a simple return to the old notions of class struggle and socialist revolution: the question of how it is really possible to undermine the global capitalist system is not a rhetorical one- maybe it is not really possible, at least not in the foreseeable future"(Zizek, 1999: 352-353)
While Žižek’s later work can be firmly located within this project, Žižek himself rarely systematically reflects on the genealogy of his work (Sharpe, 2004: 9). Nonetheless, Žižek’s work can be located in the tradition of Western Marxism, inherited from the Frankfurt school. Žižek, however, rarely discusses the Frankfurt school, and repeatedly disavows the status of ‘Cultural Studies’, a discipline established largely through the Frankfurt school.
Despite this rejection of Cultural Studies, perhaps Žižek’s most accepted role as a Marxist is as a theorist of capitalist consumer ideology, culture and enjoyment (Sharpe, 2005:9). Instead of the Frankfurt school, the tradition of psycho-Marxism which Žižek has most followed is Althusser, who was for a time banished to the theoretical netherlands (in part by his own critique) before being rehabilitated by Žižek, most notably in The Sublime Object of Ideology (Miklitsch, 1998: 228). Here, Žižek argues that Althusser’s work has been disavowed, particularly the debate between Althusser and Lacan, and masked by the division between Habermas and Foucault, because Althusser is the traumatic kernel that must be excluded from modern philosophy because of its association with radical Lacanian ethics, which break with the hegemonic logic of post-Marxist anti-essentialism (Zizek, 1989: 1).
Post-Marxism has structured both the intellectual and political world since Žižek began publishing in English. These publications, beginning in 1989, came after the fall of the Berlin wall and the associated collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (Sharpe, 2004), and notably after the publication of Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, which largely defined the post-Marxist discipline. As Žižek himself states, after the demise of actually existing Marxism, psycho-Marxism has taken on a different role. Instead of defensively supplementing Marxism, Post-Marxist psychoanalysis instead focuses on the role of the political, working with Laclau’s notion that ‘society doesn’t exist’, that is, that society is characterised by an unsymbolisable antagonism that prevents the fullness of society. Thus, any kind of essentialism, including Marxist historical materialism, is rejected.
For Laclau, and others working in his discursive arena, any reference to Marxism is limited only to the Marxist tradition. In contrast, Žižek’s use of Marxism attempts to restore the fullness of the tradition, even if this restoration occurs via a negatively charged ontological position which rejects strict Marxist essentialism. Instead, Žižek attempts to rehabilitate Marxist critique of political economy as a form of anti-capitalism political intervention by reference to a different kind of essentialism; the Lacanian Real.
The first hints of Žižek’s affinity with Marxism, occur in The Sublime Object of Ideology when he contends that for Lacan, Marx invented the symptom (Zizek, 1989: 11-53). Marx’s ‘discovery’ of the symptom lies in his identification of a place with no place within a universal entity. Bourgeois ideology identifies this place as an external/contingent aberration to the normal functioning of capital, but, vitally, Marx contends that this symptomatic element contains the Truth of capital. As an example of this interpretative procedure, Žižek examines the relationship between freedom and labour. In capitalism, all men are free; there exists no formal inequality between citizens. However, as part of this freedom, workers are free to sell their labour on the market. This necessary act, without which there would be no formal/abstract freedom, removes the freedom of those selling their labour. This notion of a particular element that subverts its own universal foundation is later developed in the Lacanian notion of a symptom. Comparable examples are also found in private property (we are all free to own private property, but because others own private property, the majority are not able own property as a means of production and are forced to sell their labour).
According to Žižek, however, Marx’s mistake was to attempt to remove the symptom, yet maintain capitalist productivity in an attempt to produce a utopian socialism. This attempt at positivisation, which also affects the Marxist notions of commodity fetishism and ideology, is an incommensurable barrier between psychoanalysis and several elements of Marxist theory. Conversely, Žižek notes the fundamental homology between the logics of surplus value (Marx/capital) and surplus enjoyment (Lacan/subjectivity), although he reminds the reader that this link is not one made by Marx, who was historically unaware of the ‘turn to language’ which has produced this homology.
Žižek’s usage of Lacanian concepts, however, always comes with a Lacanian twist. This ‘twist’ is controversial, often moving the terms outside of strict Marxist usage. Class is an example of this movement. Žižek’s use of class signalled an increasing move into the Marxist tradition. His utilisation of class, however, differs markedly from the classical Marxist definition. Žižek resists any positivisation of class, instead considering it to be a modality of the Lacanian Real, that is, a hitch that all symbolisations struggle to integrate. This hitch is then excluded from the discursive horizon, thus becoming a positive factor for other discourses.However, Žižek’s use of class has been controversial. Some critics contend that Žižek does not adequately define his concept of class (Devenney, 2007: 54; Homer, 2001: 14; Sharpe, 2004: 203-4), others argue that Žižek’s Lacanian version of class is incommensurable with the Marxist tradition from which it stems and thus renders it politically redundant (Laclau, 2000: 206; Robinson & Tormey, 2005: 95-96).
In response, I seek to intervene in this gap – whilst acknowledging the relative salience of the critical positions - by suggesting that class operates in four intertwined iterations. The first is the failure of class relation; class as a modality of the Real. The second is the repression of the necessary exclusion which occurs in actually existing class relationships. This repression is class as the concrete universal. Because there is no possible translation between the concrete universal and the associated abstract universal imaginary (the signifiers and images which cohere our common constructions of shared social life) the affect of the concrete universal is also the Real (in terms of the parallax gap within the universal totality). Finally we have class as it appears within the abstract universal. In this sense the meaning of ‘class’ is determined by a hegemonic battle. Consequently, part of the difficulty of utilising class is the discursive positions into which it fits. Conversely, identifying the most salient of these positions is a vital task for any instantiation of Marxism which hopes to make a radical intervention in the capitalist system.
6. Chapter Plan
1. Introduction (5000 words)
2. Literature Review (15,000 words)
In this chapter I will review the background literature for my project, seeking to set the context for my inquiry. Specifically I seek to construct a basis for the core debates in this thesis. Essentially, the problems for using psychoanalysis for political enquiry, the problems of western marxism and the lack of radical conceptions of capitalism
a. Psychoanalytic Theory
b. Psychoanalysis and Politics
c. Progressions in Marxist theory
d. Psychoanalysis and Marxism
e. Contemporary perspectives on capitalism
f. Slavoj Žižek
3. Methodology/Conceptual foundations (20,000 words)
In this Chapter I will seek to outline the theoretical foundations of my investigation. These contours are largely shaped by Žižek. As such, the chapter will be directed towards a discussion of the key categories of his work in terms of my investigation in capitalism and the prospectives for political psychoanalysis.
a. Žižek
i. Ontology, the Real and influences
ii. Subjectivity
iii. Universality
iv. Ideology
v. Žižek’s theory of capitalism and Marxism
4. What is capitalism? (25,000 words)
Supported by discursive investigations into concrete areas of capitalism, this chapter seeks to answer one of the core questions of the thesis, ‘What is Capitalism?’ This is not a matter of mapping capitalism, but rather understanding the structures of capitalist discourse and ideology. This chapter will most likely be strongly supported by Žižek’s work, although investigating an area where Žižek’s work has not be applied in detail.
a. Investigation of the structure of 21st century capitalism, informed by my own critical take on Žižek’s psycho-marxism
5. Acting against capitalism (25,000 words)
Given the conclusions reached in Chapter 4, how can we act meaningfully against capitalism? This debate looks to reach some conclusion in regards to the normative deficit in post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. As such it seeks to go beyond the co-ordinates of Žižek’s work. This chapter also considers the ethical status of capitalism itself.
a. Psychoanalytic theories of the political/ethics/normativity
b. Žižek’s form of political intervention
c. Alenka Zupancic
d. Rethinking the notion of surplus
6. Conclusion (5000 words)
7. Stages of Inquiry
Establish frame of reference (Completed 2007)
Žižek
Generate specific research questions (2007)
Undertake literature review in regards to those questions (partially complete)
Wider literature review – Feb- Oct 2008 (suspension for overseas travel, April/May 2008)
Psychoanalysis (Feb-Mar 08)
i. Freud (Feb)
ii. Lacan (March)
Political psychoanalysis (2006/7)
Marxism (June/July 08)
Marxism and Psychoanalysis (Aug-Oct 08)
i. Freud and Marx (Aug)
ii. The Frankfurt School (Aug/Sept)
iii. Fredric Jameson (Oct)
iv. Žižek (2007)
Write up Chapter 2 (Literature Review) –Nov 2008
Write up Chapter 3 (Conceptual framework) – Dec/Jan 2009
What is signified by ‘Capitalism’? – Feb- May 2009
Theoretical application
Discursive examination of the structures and exegencies of capitalism
Write up Chapter 4 (What is signified by ‘Capitalism’?) – Jun 2009
Acting against capitalism – July- Sept 2009
The discpline of political psychoanalysis in the context of capitalism
Ethics of psychoanalysis
i. Alenka Zupancic
ii. Rethinking the notion of surplus
Write up Chapter 5 (Acting against Capitalism) – Oct 2009
Rewrite Chapters 2 & 3 – Nov 2009
Write Introduction and Conclusion – Dec 2009
Editing/Tidying Up – Jan- Feb 2010
Finish Date: March 1, 2010 (including two month suspension, April/May 2008)
8. List of publications and Presentations
Publications
Symptomatic Readings: Žižekian theory as a discursive strategy (Forthcoming, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Feburary 2008)
Howling at a Concrete Moon: Introduction to the Graduate Edition of IJZS (Forthcoming, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Feburary 2008)
Presentations
Capitalism and Ideological Critique, Social of Social and Cultural Studies Post-Graduate Conference September 2007, Massey University
'I Have A Hat, But I Have No Rabbit" Žižek, Capitalism And
Ideological Critique, The Australian Sociological Association and Sociological Association of Aoteroa New Zealand Joint Conference, Dec 2007, Auckland University
9. Bibilography
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Boucher, G., Glynos, J., & Sharpe, M. (2005). Traversing the Fantasy; Critical Responses to Slavoj Zizek. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bowman, P., & Stamp, R. (Eds.). (2007). The Truth of Zizek. London: Continuum.
Brockelman, T. (2003). The failure of the radical democratic imaginary: Zizek versus Laclau and Mouffe on vestigial utopia. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 29(2).
Browning, D. S. (1991). Can Psychoanalysis Inform Ethics? If So, How? In E. Wallwork (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Zizek, S. (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Verso: London.
Butler, R. (2005). Slavoj Zizek: Live Theory. New York: Continuum.
Butler, R., & Stephens, S. (Eds.). (2005). Interrogating the Real. London: Continuum.
Butler, R., & Stephens, S. (Eds.). (2006). The Universal Exception: Selected Writings, Volume Two. London: Continuum.
Daly, G. (1999a). Ideology and it's paradoxes: Dimensions of Fantasy and Enjoyment. Journal of Political Ideologies, 4(2).
Daly, G. (1999b). Politics and the Impossible: Beyond Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction. Theory, Culture and Society, 16(4), 75-98.
Daly, G., & Zizek, S. (2004). Conversations with Zizek. London: Polity Press.
Dean, J. (2006). Zizek's Politics. New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Viking Press.
Devenney, M. (2001). Towards and Ethics of Incommensurability. Strategies, 14(2).
Devenney, M. (2007). Zizek's Passion for the Real. In P. Bowman & R. Stamp (Eds.), The Truth of Zizek. London: Continuum.
Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Freud, S. (1922). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Boni and Liveright Publishers.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilisation and its Discontents. In M. Calarco & P. Atterton (Eds.), The Continental Ethics Reader (pp. pp.233-239). New York: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1939). Moses and Monotheism. London: The Hogarth press and the Institute of psycho-analysis.
Glynos, J. (2001). The Grip of Ideology: A Lacanian approach to the theory of ideology. Journal of Political Ideologies, 6(2), 191-214.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Havard University Press.
Homer, S. (1996). Psychoanalysis, Representation, Politics: On the (im)possibility of a psychoanalytic theory of ideology? Paper presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Universities Association for Psychoanalytic Studies.
Homer, S. (2001). It's the political economy, stupid! On Zizek's Marxism. Radical Philosophy, 108(July/August).
Kay, S. (2003). Zizek : a critical introduction / Sarah Kay. Cambridge, UK : Malden, MA :: Polity ; Distributed in the USA by Blackwell Pub.,.
Laclau, E. (2000). Constructing Universality. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Zizek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason / Ernesto Laclau. New York :: Verso,.
Laclau, E. (2006). Why constructing a people is the main task of radical politics. Critical Inquiry, 32.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Miklitsch, R. (1998). Introduction. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Myers, T. (2003). Slavoj Zizek. London: Routledge.
Parker, I. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction. London Pluto Press.
PCE. (2005). See Change: Learning and education for sustainability: Parlimentary Comissioner for the Environment.
Robinson, A. (2004). The Politics of Lack. BJPIR, 6.
Robinson, A., & Tormey, S. (2005). A Ticklish Subject? Zizek and the Future of Left Radicalism. Thesis Eleven, 80, 94-107.
Robinson, A., & Tormey, S. (2006). Zizek Marx: Sublime Object or a Plague of Fantasies. Historical Materialism, 14(3), 145-174.
Sharpe, M. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1997). Ambigious Ideology and the Lacanian Twist. Journal for the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, 8-9, 117-130.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the political. London: Routledge.
Wright, E., & Wright, E. (Eds.). (1999). The Zizek Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991a). For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991b). Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (1994). The Spectre of Ideology. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Mapping Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1996). The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1998). Psychoanalysis in Post-Marxism: The Case of Alain Badiou. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. Verso: London.
Zizek, S. (2001). What can Lenin Tell Us about Freedom Today? Rethinking Marxism, 13(2).
Zizek, S. (2002a). A Plea for Leninist Intolerance. Critical Inquiry, 28(2).
Zizek, S. (2002b). Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917. New York: Verson.
Zizek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
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[i] I have not read a lot of Jameson’s work, but as I have noted in Section Seven, I intend to include him within the thesis as a reader of Lacan and Marx. Indeed, I expect Jameson to become a central influence.
[ii] It is worth noting that Freud also turned to socio-political analysis in his later work (Freud, 1922: 206; 1930, 1939)
[iii] Lacan remained committed to psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline and the usage of psychoanalysis beyond the clincial patient continues to be controversial. Debate continues around the translation of psychoanalytic terms and ethics, which remain orientated towards the individual and analytical practice, to social life (Bellamy, 1993; Browning, 1991; Homer, 1996).
[iv] Lacan himself was divided on this point. He recognised, following Aristotle, that there are two definitions of revolution; the overthrow of the existing and a continual rotation around a central axis. This later definition is particularly pertinent for psychoanalytic theory as it illustrates how the appearance of change – the rotation of the wheel – can actually be a fundamental stability constituted around a disavowed exclusion.
[v] Žižek writes strongly against the discipline of desconstruction and its post-structuralist roots because of its ignorance of the stability caused by the Lacanian Real. Nonetheless, I have used to term here to signify Žižek’s political practice, which although different in method, has much the same aim as Derridian deconstruction.
[vi] Following Yannis Stavrakakis’ (Stavrakakis, 1999: 71) work on Lacanian political theory, I make a distinction here between politics – the administration of society within a pre-established framework of understanding – and the political, which constitutes the production of that framework. Whilst Žižek’s form of political philosophy may never construct strong positions in terms of the positiving horizons of administrative politics, it is able to enter the realm of the political and perform critiques of both those horizons and the economies of enjoyment at work within them.
[vii] This dialogue is best illustrated in the three-way debate between Laclau, Žižek and Judith Butler in the text Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (J. Butler, Laclau, & Zizek, 2000).
[viii] In this past year I have acted as a (co) guest editor for a graduate edition of this journal. The edition is due to be published early this year and contains two pieces of my work (see Section Eight)
[ix] The Real is one of three ‘orders’ that Lacan used to represent the structure of the psyche, the other two being the symbolic – the ‘discourse of the Other’ structured by the production of signifiers – and the imaginary – the identification with various images and signifiers in the name of an illusionary wholeness.
[x] Elsewhere Zizek has described this method as ‘ideological critique’. For the sake of clarity, in this document I will stick with short-circuit
[xi] My inital investigations have come to suggest that capitalism may be an empty signifier in the sense adopted by Laclau. That is, it structures a discourse, in this case, that of the economy without taking on a settled meaning. Thus capitalism becomes the site for political battles. However, I would like to argue, although this has not been formalised, that capitalism forms something of an empty signfying system. An emptying signfying system has a reproducable formalic system, something akin to the operation of language in the unconscious (Fink, 1995: 14-21)
[xii] Several interesting points occur from this analysis. These points will be explored further in Section Five.
[xiii] Although it worth noting that now that sweatshop labour is nonexistent within western economies, it is largely off the conceptual radar. When it is invoked, it is under the discourse of human rights, rather than as a point of economics, as if with a few adjustments ‘justice’ would be achieved. This example, I believe, asserts the necessity of the rehabilitation of the Marxist critique of political economy.
[xiv] There is a certain interchangability between these terms. As I shall expand on in Section Two, for Žižek the concrete universal is the necessary exclusion from an ideology. The concrete universal, however, is unable to be translated into the terms of the dominant ideology. Instead it appears as a gap, a hestitation within the ideological order. Thus, the concrete universal is not the Real, but it has a Real affect.
[xv] At this stage, perhaps the most difficult element of this question has been the framing of the question. Essentially, in this section I wish to investigate the possibilities for action against capitalism, assuming that the object to which I refer to as ‘capitalism’ needs to be replaced. As I get further into the literature I believe that the framing of this question should get easier.
[xvi] Indeed, in terms of action against capitalism from a psychoanalytic perspective, the literature is particularly light. Much of it consists of Žižek’s work on capitalism and his critics responses. That said, there is obviously a rich line of thought on political economy and anti-capitalism against which I will engage.
[xvii] I have to confess that the ethics of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis is an area in which I am weak. I have an understanding of the contours of the debate, but I do not understand the specifics. I look forward to expanding my knowledge in this area when I reach this section of the thesis.
[xviii] Sharpe’s text is an interesting one that I will seek to engage with in greater detail at a later date. Although I do not agree with many of Sharpe’s conclusions, in particular that Žižek is a Kantian (a strangely powerful insult in the world of psychoanalytic theory), the questions which drive his research, in particular Žižek’s conceptualisation of capitalism and his use of Marxist theory are very similar to mine. This similarity and discrepancy mean that I will have to entertain a detailed analysis of Sharpe’s work on Žižek.
[xix] ‘Disco-Marxism’ refers to the relatively recent combination of discourse theory and post-Marxism.
[xx] The status of a literature review in a theoretical-discursive thesis such as this is rather ambivalent. To some extent the whole thesis is a literature review in the sense that it is working with the knowledge of past theorists. On the other hand, a theoretical thesis avoids the descriptive nature of a literature review; while it may cover much of the same historical ground, the critical nature of a theoretical thesis means that a traditional ‘literature review’ is avoided.
My thesis is broadly positioned within the field of political psychoanalysis. This field has since the 1990s been dominated by Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian psychoanalyst and social theorist. Žižek’s thought builds upon the work of post-Freudian psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan. Whilst Lacan has been Žižek’s central influence, his work remains remarkably eclectic. As well as Lacan, Žižek is also a reader of German Idealist philosopher Georg Hegel and takes guidance from various forms of Marxism, most notably Leninism. These influences have meant that Žižek’s work, and political psychoanalysis as a whole, has become a wide ranging discipline. While this has allowed its influence to be projected into a number of spheres, political psychoanalysis, at least of the Žižekian ‘brand’, has not been able to develop a settled or hegemonic position. The instability of political psychoanalytic philosophy has left a gap in the literature in regards to political action, amongst other things. It is this gap, particularly in regards to the critique of capitalism, which I am seeking to examine.
Psychoanalysis as a properly political tool has only been a relatively recent phenomenon, one that is characterised by Žižek’s work, although others before him, such as Fredric Jameson, deserve acknowledgement[i]. Psychoanalysis was originally developed as a form of clinical analysis, firstly by Sigmund Freud and then Lacan. Lacan re-read Freud, adding a theory of language which built upon the insights of both structuralism and post-structuralism. Lacan’s move to place language – as a social mechanism – at the centre of the psyche, allowed the potential for psychoanalysis to move beyond the clinical and into social and political analysis. However, although Lacan began to address psychoanalysis as a mode of social analysis in his later thought[ii], it has been primarily through the work of Žižek that Lacanian theory has become recognised as a legitimate tool for socio-political analysis[iii].
Conversely, psychoanalytic political theory has not sought to strictly correlate social life with the clinical patient, analysing the social as a patient who might, for example, be suffering from collective hysteria. Rather, because of the constitutive influence of language, the two – the individual and the social, the subject and object – are inseparable; the individual can only come into being through integration into language and the hegemonic discourses which structure social life. Likewise, social life is constituted by the presence of individual bodies; bodies which experience themselves only through language and a bodily excess which Lacan labelled jouissance. In turn these experiences add to the body of language which Lacan conceptualised as ‘the discourse of the Other’. Operating at the intersection of the body and socio-political life – a gap that Žižek, following Lacan, labels the subject – psychoanalysis has become a properly sociological discourse.
This gap produces a radical incompleteness within both the psyche and the social, a constitutive incompleteness which allows for movement, avoiding the isomorphism that would have arisen from a straight correlation. Lacan’s insistence on this negative ontology as the constitutive feature of the human condition does not allow his formulation of psychoanalysis to fit easily into traditional political philosophy. Traditional political philosophy focuses on positivised normative positions which allow for the postulation of conceptions of shared social life. Instead, as I shall expand on in Section Two, Lacanian political philosophy, particularly that practiced by Žižek, emphasises the illusory nature of these conceptions.
Žižek takes this insight further through his reading of Hegel’s dialectics. He insists that not only is every political position based on an illusion (language being ultimately contingent and requiring partial imaginary fixations to achieve meaningful stability) but these illusionary horizons of understanding are constituted upon a disavowed exclusion. Therefore, not only are any political formations which postulate positions of universality necessarily illusionary, they are also violently exclusive. The political connotations of such an insight remain unsettled. Debate still rages over whether psychoanalysis is politically conservative – because of its rejection of the possibility of utopia and progressive politics in its positivising form – or radical – if psychoanalysis reveals that nothing is natural, that anything is possible, in particular the revolution of the horizon of understanding[iv].
Thus Žižek’s work suggests that the value of psychoanalysis as a modality of political philosophy does not lie in the production of collective illusions, but rather in their deconstruction[v]. Where others argue that Lacanian psychoanalysis is not a properly political discourse because it is unable to produce an ideological conception of shared social life (Homer, 1996: 14), Žižek contends that the political utility of psychoanalysis goes beyond such conceptions[vi]. Psychoanalysis is political because of its emphasis on negative ontology – psychoanalysis examines the manner in which inherently contingent social constructions achieve relative stability. More than that though, psychoanalysis also exposes that which is not contingent in social constructions; the disavowed exclusions upon which social constructions are founded.
Although Žižek’s work has consistently followed this Lacanian logic of social analysis, his focus has not always been overtly political. In his first English-language text The Sublime Object of Ideology, Žižek stated that his aim is to ‘serve as an introduction to the fundamental concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis…accomplish a ‘return to Hegel’…[and] contribute to the theory of ideology’(Zizek, 1989: 7). Indeed, much of Žižek’s early work focuses on ideological analyses, particularly of popular culture (Zizek, 1991b, 1997, 1992) although these texts often had a political edge (see Zizek, 1991a).
I Although Žižek has focused more on capitalism in his later texts, his interest in Marxism has been evident since his initial work. As an exemplar, in the opening chapter of The Sublime Object of Ideology, he claims that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian notion of the symptom. Žižek’s Marxism will be discussed in detail in the following sections, as it constitutes a core element of my thesis. It was not until the publication of The Ticklish Subject in 1999, however, that Žižek’s work became explicitly political. Additionally, Žižek began identifying global capitalism as his primary political target. In the introduction to this text, Žižek stated;
“While this book is philosophical in its basic tenor, it is first and foremost an engaged political intervention, addressing the burning question of how we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal-democratic multi-culturalism”(Zizek, 1999:4)
Thus, the central emphasis of my thesis correlates most strongly with Žižek’s later work, although some of his most interesting theoretical thought was established in his earlier books, particularly The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989) and For They Know Not What They Do (1991).
As Žižek’s work has become more popular (and controversial, owing largely to his political turn), a range of secondary theorists and critics have developed around him. Most prominent amongst these commentators are Glyn Daly, Jodi Dean and Yannis Stavrakakis. Žižek has also become involved in a long running dialogue with post-Marxist discourse theorist and one time ally, Ernesto Laclau[vii]. Žižek has also been the subject of a rush of (often critical) introductory texts, including those by Butler (2005), Dean (2006), Kay (2003), Myers (2003), Parker (2004), Sharpe (2004) and a collaboration between Daly and Žižek (2004). Additionally a number of edited volumes have been published (Boucher, Glynos, & Sharpe, 2005; Bowman & Stamp, 2007; R. Butler & Stephens, 2005, 2006; Wright & Wright, 1999) and a online journal, the International Journal of Žižek Studies, was established in 2007[viii].
2. Conceptual Framework
My thesis is driven by a number of theoretical convictions. These convictions stem from a commitment to Lacanian psychoanalysis, as conceived by Žižek. In my work thus far, and in the remainder of the thesis, I will continue to interpret and advance Žižek’s thought, but I believe that the thesis will remain within the broad field determined by Žižek – with the notable exception of Question Two (political action against capitalism), as detailed below in Section Four. There are three central Žižekian categories that structure my thought. These categories are as follows;
- Lacan’s negative ontology and the Real and Jouissance
- Dialectical materialism and universality
- Ideological Fantasy
I will discuss each in turn.
Lacan’s negative ontology and the Real
Lacanian ontology positions ‘lack’ as the fundamental element of the human condition. Lack is produced because language creates a mediating barrier between the subject and the world of things, effectively ‘castrating’ the subject upon entry into the symbolic order. Any attempt at symbolisation creates a gap between the language used in that symbolisation and the object to which language refers. Lacan called this gap the Real[ix]. The Real is not only lack, it is also excess. The Real exists as excess because of the manner in which castration, the source of lack, is itself repressed. As a consequence of that repression, the subject is caught in a condition of seeking to regain the absent, but impossible fullness, which existed for them before entering language ‘before the letter’. Lacan called this state Jouissance.
Jouissance is a troubling kind of pleasure; because it represents both the possibility and impossibility of returning to the Real. This paradoxical state is maintained by the presentation to the subject of various objects that can operate as substitutes for the primal lack, known by Lacan as objet a or the empty signifier. In an alternative mode, rather than being presented as objects that can suture lack, a range of objects emerge that come to be postulated as being responsible for thwarting the subject’s quest to achieve a condition that is without lack, as such they are posited as causing the negativity that is inherent in the social. These objects are antagonisms and symptoms, which, despite their presentation within the social as elements that are to be eliminated, are actually sites of enjoyment.
Universality
Žižek’s work on universality represents the core elements of my concepual framework. Žižek splits the idea of universality into an abstract and a concrete form (producing an abstract universal and a concrete universal). The abstract universal provides the hegemonic imaginary horizons – the signifiers and images the support any concept of shared social life – that people use to guides their actions, e.g. the concept of individual freedom or that of human rights. This universal imaginary stands in for the lack that constitutes the social domain. The abstract universal is normally based around an empty signifier, or an objet a, which in Lacanian terms provides a suture for that primal lack and, because of the sense of fullness that it gives, provides the subject with jouissance.
In contrast to the condensing effect of the abstract horizon, the universal exception acts as a dislocating factor again this horizon. The exception, known as the concrete universal, lies on the ‘flip-side’ of the parallax of universality, being ‘the other’ to the abstract universal. In this sense of it being the ‘flip-side’ of the coin, there is no connection between the abstract and concrete universals, no symbolic point of translation. Vitally, however, they nevertheless remain linked as a totality. Although the concrete universal exists as the singular exception to the universal horizon, at the same time this exception comes to exceed that horizon; it is necessary for the continued functioning of the abstract universal.
The absolute poverty of many Third world workers is an example of the concrete universal. These workers, not so much those who toil in sweatshops, but those outside of sweatshops – the reserve army of unemployed workers whose presence allows for the continuation of sweatshop conditions – are necessary for the efficient functioning of capitalism and its abstract universal horizons. These horizons, which in capitalism we may consider to be structured under such notions as ‘wealth’ and ‘progress’, require the presence – and most likely death – of these workers, yet this condition cannot be acknowledged within capitalist ideology; it is the concrete universal – the exception which represents the unbearable Truth of the abstract universal horizon.
Because abstract horizons rely on the exclusion of particular elements (they being ‘the exception’ to those abstract horizons) for their stability, strong tension exists between the exception (the concrete universal) and the abstract universal horizon. However, as no means exist for translating between the two, this tension comes out through the effect that the Real has upon the abstract universal.
The irresolvable nature of the difference between the two modalities of universality gets enclosed within, and thus occluded by, a particular element, the symptom. The symptom is the link between the two areas of analytical investment for a political approach drawing upon psychoanalysis; the abstract universal imaginary and the concrete universal. Within the abstract universal, the symptom embodies the universal exception and thus the Real. As such, the domestication of this potentially dislocating Real element in the symptom is vital for the smooth functioning of the abstract universal.
Yet, despite the disturbing presence of the symptom, its existence is still necessary for the functioning of the universal horizon. The symptom keeps a distance between the universal imaginary and the contradiction between the fantasmatic postulation of the posivitity of the social and the inherent negativity of the Real. On the other hand the presence of the symptom creates a gap within the totality of universality, revealing the presence of the Real and the concrete universal. Thus whilst symptoms are enjoyed, they are also potentially the cause of anxiety and dislocation
Ideological Fantasy
Ideology and fantasy are the main drivers through which the symptom is firstly acknowledged and then domesticated. Together they build the subject’s sense of social and psychic coherence, belonging to the Lacanian register of the imaginary. Fantasy, a modality of the imaginary, provides an unconscious supplement of jouissance which acts as the base for the operation of ideology. This operation is known as ideological fantasy, the discursive strategy by which an illusory jouissance is obtained. This possibility relies on ideological fantasy externalising the symptomatic elements which threaten the abstract universal, but also the maintenance of these symptoms.
The reconstruction of ideology has been a vital move in psychoanalytic thought. Ideology had been predominantly presented in modernist thought as distinct from ‘reality’ in the sense that it was an illusory appearance as opposed to essence, at which modernism was driving. For this reason, with the advent of post-structuralist thought and the related post-modern journey into relativism, ideology as a concept was rejected (Stavrakakis, 1997: 118-122). Through an operation of determinate reflection in which the very negation of ideology has become its positive condition, Lacanian theory has transcended these definitions of ideology and has rehabilitated the term. Ideology stills operates as misrecognition, but of a different nature as ideology is transferred from the epistemological to the ontological (Glynos, 2001: 192). Rather than a distinction between reality and ideology, ideology is seen as the guarantor of the consistency of the social; there is no reality without ideology. Because all discourses are ultimately dislocated and lacking, ideology provides the role of covering this lack, and hence the contingent political nature of any such ideological construction (2001: 191). Thus through ideology the subject suffers from misrecognition of the negative ontology of the social (Stavrakakis, 1997: 123).The key role of ideology in the construction of normality, it can thus be surmised, is to include and pacify the symptom through its staging of the symptom within fantasy formations to which the subject holds. It is the symptom that disrupts the consistency of the social and thus the presence of the symptom must be negated (1997: 128). Paradoxically, in order to achieve this, the symptom must be included in the ideological fantasy of the abstract universal as a point of enjoyment. As Glyn Daly states “The central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through simultaneously producing the ‘threat’ to that closure” (Daly, 1999a: 220). The fantasmatic construction, and deconstruction, of the symptom is of vital political importance.
3. Methodology
A theoretical thesis such as mine does not have a methodology in the same sense that an empirical thesis might. If my thesis can be said to have a methodology, it is as an extension of my conceptual framework. That said, I do have an approach to the analysis of social forms which will be applied throughout the thesis, in particular in regards to Question One (see Section Four). This approach is perhaps less of a methodology and more of a ‘discursive strategy’ for analysis. The difference is not merely semantic, but rather seeks to avoid the postivising nature of fixed methodological positions.
The discursive strategy relies heavily on Žižek’s approach to the political and philosophy in general as outlined in The Parallax View (Zizek, 2006). Žižek describes his approach as being a ‘short-circuit’[x]. A short circuit approach is a critical reading of a political power apparatus such that the hidden underside of its discursive expression is revealed, through which the apparatus functions. Hence; “(T)he reader should not simply have learned something new; the point is rather to make them aware of another – disturbing - side of something they knew all the time” (2006: ix). Žižek believes, and it will be the position adopted throughout my thesis, that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the privileged instrument of the short-circuit approach, although it is necessary to note that a short-circuit relies heavily on Hegelian dialectical logic.The ‘short-circuit’ approach aims to ‘practice’ concrete universality by confronting a universal with its ‘unbearable example’ (2006:13). This is the core orientation at the heart of the argumentation in this thesis; the identification of the internal fault points within a political formation. These internal limit points -symptoms- can be revealed as constitutive of the universal horizon constructed by the discourse and thus a concrete universal.
In order to produce a short-circuit analysis, one cannot simply interpret the discursive field. Rather, as Stavrakakis suggests (1997:129), the role of critical discourse is to deconstruct the fantasmatic background that sutures the social and to find the symptomatic elements that signal the internal point of failure – the limit point – of the abstract imaginary. Similarly, Žižek contends “(T)he aim of the critique of ideology is the analysis of an ideological edifice, is to extract this symptomatic kernel which the official, public, ideological text simultaneously disavows and needs for its undisturbed functioning” (1996:3).
As a consequence of the fantasmatic background of a universal edifice, short-circuit critique comes to involve two important moves. The first is to reveal the contingency of every social construction, to demonstrate that reality is neither natural nor positive. The second is to consider the manner in which an ideology grips its subjects; the operation by which political formations maintain their stability, despite this apparent contingency. The substance that achieves this outcome, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, is jouissance.
It is this short-circuit approach, along with the previously detailed conceptual framework, which will direct my theoretical investigations throughout the course of the thesis. This will be particularly reflected in regards to my first question, where I will seek to understand the contours of global capitalism by highlighting the symptomatic kernels that are disavowed from capitalism, as well as the ideological structures and economies of enjoyment (jouissance) that are in operation within capitalism.
4. Core Research Questions
In my thesis, I investigate two fundamental questions, whose articulation has been influenced by my engagement with the work of Žižek;
What is signified by ‘capitalism’?
Upon what basis might capitalist organisation be most effectively challenged?
The conditions of possibility for these two questions themselves lie within the following theoretical line of inquiry;
What are the prospects for Marxist theory and political action after the ‘turn to language’, in particular Lacan’s conception of ontology?
I will discuss each of these questions below.
Question 1: What is signified by ‘capitalism’? A critical Žižekian theory of capitalism
In this question I apply Žižek’s conceptual framework for the purpose of generating a theory of capitalism. This theory does not seek to wholly describe or map capitalism, but rather to identify the core structural elements that allow us to identify the signifier ‘capitalism’[xi]. I believe that this question is an original endeavour, moreover such an identification is an academic requirement for theoretical ‘rigour’ and one that is vital for identifying the coordinates for the debate in Question 2.
A thorough and systematic analysis of capitalism has not occurred within the coordinates of Lacanian theory. There have been some notable discussions of capitalism from a broadly psychoanalytic perspectives, most salient of this Michael Hardt and Antionio Negri’s Empire(2000) and Gilles Deleuzes and Felix Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus (1977). I will engage with these texts within my thesis, but neither has achieved lasting academic or political status. Nor do they work from the same Lacanian or Žižekian framework in which my thesis is situated.
Žižek has come the closest to producing an analysis, particularly through his work on Marxism[xii]. At various moments throughout his oeuvre Žižek produces ‘ad hoc’ analyses of capitalism often as an illustration of an element of Marxist theory or as part of a larger analysis. From this, one can piece together a rough Žižekian theory of capitalism, although it is not systematic. Matthew Sharpe, a commentator on Žižek, produced an interesting analysis of Žižek’s conception of capitalism, asking whether Žižek did indeed have a theory of capitalism. He concluded that whilst Žižek calls for such a theory, he often hesitates in his critiques of capitalism, either making ad hoc analyses, ‘journalistic’ comments or directing the reader to another source. Sharpe contends that whilst these forms of analysis may be at times interesting, they have little in common with Žižek’s Lacanian framework (Sharpe, 2004:196-7). Thus the literature remains open for a Lacanian or Žižekian analysis of capitalism. Indeed, I believe, with Sharpe, that if Žižek continues to cite capitalism as the core target of his political and theoretical endeavour, such a theory is necessary.
The second rationale for selecting this question stems from Žižek’s conceptual framework, which will be discussed in more detail in Section Two. This framework has the potential to consider capitalism in a manner which subverts its understanding of itself. Under the hegemonic capitalist logic, a logic which is shared by positivistic social science, elements which appear strictly external to capitalism are considered to be outside of the influence of capitalism. Third world poverty, as an illustration, is not considered to be a necessary element of capitalism. Rather, these economies are considered to be outside of capitalism; they are poor because they are not capitalist enough. Such is the logic of the term ‘developing economy’. In contrast, Žižek asserts that every ideology is constituted by an exclusion which is necessarily disavowed; it cannot occur within the terms of the hegemonic horizon. Taking this logic further, with the assistance of Marxist analysis, one can consider that Third World poverty is necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. Capitalism may not have explicitly or directly created this poverty but it does require it for its own reproduction.
If developing countries were to become fully developed, taking on the levels of consumption of a mid-range developed economy such as New Zealand, official estimates from the New Zealand Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) suggests that another five planets would be required to support the necessary levels of resource consumption (PCE, 2005). Additionally, in order to keep costs of production down, capitalism requires workers of the Third World to remain at subsistence wages. These wages are able to stay low because of the over supply of workers in these economies.
This is the true horror of capitalism, the disavowed exclusion which is constitutive of the ideology. For sweatshops to exist, and they are a historically constant element of capitalism[xiii], there has to be an oversupply of workers for employed workers to accept their working conditions; if they refuse to work, there is always another from the ‘reserve army’ to take their place. This excess, the unemployed sweatshop worker, the poorest of the poor, are the disavowed foundation of capitalism, but also its motor.
One can fairly easily extend this logic as part of a Lacanian theory of capitalism If capitalism is an empty signifying system, one that can reproduce itself in the name of profit in an infinite number of cultural contexts, then these excluded workers, which we can roughly label ‘class’, and which take the place of the Real becoming what Žižek calls (following Hegel) the concrete universal.[xiv] If this is the case, the final element of the three Lacanian ‘registers’ is liberal democracy, which functions in the place of the imaginary register. Liberal democracy, with its cousin, multi-culturalism, provides the imaginary element of global capitalism; it is capitalism in its more palatable form. Indeed the signifier ‘capitalism’ is rarely invoked as the signifier of the western system of society. There appears to be something disturbing in the term; one could never use it as the justification of a political action. The Bush administration could use democracy as reason for invading Iraq, or even national security, certainly within the United States. To cite capitalism, however, would be hugely controversial.
This is not to suggest, however, that capitalism is somehow considered to be the enemy of the western people. If belief is best revealed through behaviour rather than ideals, then capitalism is at the very core of western society through the performance of consumption. Consumption, as the fetishism of commodities, acts as what Žižek refers to as the ‘spontaneous consciousness of ideology’ (Zizek, 1994: 14); that is, consumption shapes, and has become, our common sense construction of the world.
Finally, I believe it is necessary to produce a detailed understanding of global capitalism in order to properly investigate the second of my enquiries: the political possibilities for radical action against capitalism. By understanding the structure of global capitalism, we are better positioned to understand both the reasons why we must act against capitalism and the potential opportunities, and dead ends, for radical political action.
Thus I feel the question ‘What is signified by Capitalism? , is a particularly valuable one. It is, I believe that the position from which I am investigating this question makes it an original enquiry, but one that does not require much of an extension of the Žižekian conceptual framework, rather its application to a new area.
If this is the case, however, we must consider why this question has not been previously asked and answered. There are two especially salient reasons. Firstly, Žižek is notoriously erratic in his work. He rarely systematically reflects on his objects of inquiry or enters into substantive concrete analysis in any depth. Thus, to some extent this section of my thesis would be doing Žižek’s ‘dirty work’. Although, of course, this work will be completed in a critical lens, rather then attempting to parrot and reproduce Žižek. While Žižek’s work provides an insightful conceptual framework for understanding capitalism, it is a framework that I have always interpreted in my own manner and a framework which encourages such interpretations.
Additionally, Žižek and other theorists working within post-foundational social theory are well aware of the epistemological problems that stem from attempting to name and reify an object. Such is the issue with asking the question ‘What is capitalism?’ One can never fully ‘map’ any object; any representation will never be fully representative. Nevertheless, I would not like to fall into a refusal to identify an object because of the necessary imperfections of such an identification. I do not wish to explicitly positivise capitalism, however, in order to properly critique an object it is a theoretical necessity to understand it, even if that understanding necessary reproduces the limitations of language.
Question 2. Upon what basis might capitalist organisation be most effectively challenged?[xv]
Building from the previous question, in this question I seek to uncover, evaluate and prescribe the available actions against capitalism. This is a much more demanding task than Question 1, one without a readily available solution[xvi]. The question of ethics and normativity in relation to political action is one that has plagued socio-political psychoanalytic theory (see Bellamy, 1993; Brockelman, 2003; Browning, 1991; Daly, 1999b; Devenney, 2001; Homer, 1996; Laclau, 2000; Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2005, 2006; Stavrakakis, 1999; Zupancic, 2000, 2006).
Žižek, following Lacan, refuses to posit any kind of normative position. Instead, his political interventions consist of ‘short-circuit’ critiques aimed at unveiling the disavowed foundations of ideology (see Section Three). This position models that of the Lacanian ethics of psychoanalysis, which force the subject into an encounter with the Real and the Truth of their own position. Lacanian psychoanalytic ethics do not seek to eradicate the gap between the symbolic and Real (for example, of attempting to bring the exception into existence), but rather come to terms with this fundamental separation and acknowledging the constitutive status of this exception (Zizek, 1989: 3).[xvii]
Some theorists utilising Lacan have sought to develop political and ethical positions steaming from Lacan, such as Stavrakakis’s ‘Beyond the ethics of harmony’ (Stavrakakis, 1999), Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s ‘Radical Democracy’(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) project and Laclau’s more recent articulations of Populism (Laclau, 2005, 2006) and Alenka Zupancic’s ‘Ethics of the Real’(Zupancic, 2000).Whilst these points provide some valuable insights, none have gripped either the political or theoretical arenas, nor have they been applied to capitalism or political in any form.
This section is by far the most open of any of the thesis and I expect that my understanding of the issues involved will expand rapidly with my knowledge of the literature. Nonetheless, it remains an important, if not THE important question to answer
Question 3. What, after the turn to language, is the value of Marxist theory for the critique of capitalist political economy and radical politics?
This question underpins both of the previous questions and as such is at the core of my theoretical inquiry. My conceptual framework (see Section Two) is dominated by psychoanalytic theory but seeks to engage with Marxist theory in order to produce a critique of global capitalism. The core dilemma with this fusion is, ‘If we accept the ontological commitments and implications of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory – most notably the effect of the Real and the associated Lacanian logic of the signifier – can Marxism, or at least the Marxist tradition, be used as an interpretive, critical or normative framework?
This question reflects on both questions in different ways. As will be expanded further in Section Five, Žižek has utilised and interpreted a number of Marxist concepts through his Lacanian/Hegelian framework. These include commodity fetishism, ideology, class and the crucial link between surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment. Žižek also credits Marx with inventing the Lacan notion of the symptom (Zizek, 1989). These concepts, however, are dominated by their psychoanalytic conception which has left critics with the role of questioning in what sense notions like class are in any way Marxist (Sharpe, 2004)[xviii]. Nonetheless, as suggested in Section Five, Žižek’s combination of ‘psycho-Marxism’ does produce some intriguing possibilities for the critique of capitalist political economy where traditional Marxist categories, given a Lacanian twist, open up new possibilities for analysis.
Yet Žižek conception of psycho-Marxism remains fundamentally Lacanian, predicated upon Lacan’s negative ontology. This negative ontology is at odds with Marxist political economy, particularly in terms of political practice. For Žižek, Marx’s key error is that he thought that he could remove the symptomatic aspects of the capitalist mode of production (class) and replace them with a socialist and ultimately communist mode of political economy, whilst maintaining the same levels of productivity. Žižek contends that what appears to be an obstacle (private property and profit) to the full realisation of economic productivity, is actually the inherent condition (Zizek, 1989: 53). Žižek is subject to no such imaginary illusions. As such, he takes little guidance from Marx in terms of political action. That said, Žižek has (although less often in his recent work) turned to Lenin as an example of the Lacanian Act and has even evoked Stalin, if he is in a particularly cantankerous mood (Zizek, 2001, 2002a, 2002b).
Thus, it appears that psycho-Marxism (which has a long history, as discussed in Section Five), has much potential for understanding the structures of capitalist ideology –
certainly more than its cousin, post-Marxist ‘disco-Marxism’[xix], as practiced by Laclau. Yet, when it comes to political action, it appears that Marxism has little to offer psychoanalytic theory.
5. Literature Review
Because of difficulties formalising my research question(s), I have not conducted a literature review around these questions to the depth I would prefer[xx]. Instead my work has focused predominately on Žižek’s interpretations of Marxism. That focus will be reflected in this section. However, as can be noted in Sections Six and Seven, I do plan to thoroughly cover the history of both disciplines individually and their fusion into ‘psycho-Marxism’.
Attempts to combine psychoanalysis and Marxism into a viable explanatory and prescriptive political project have a long history, beginning with the ‘Freudian Marxism’ of theorists such as Wilhelm Reich, Siegfried Bernfeld, Erich Fromm, and Paul Federn. Following these somewhat vulgar attempts at fusion, which focused on supplementing Marxism with a Freudian theory of subjectivity, the Frankfurt school developed a neo-Marxist integration of Freudian psychoanalysis (Miklitsch, 1998: 228). The Frankfurt school theorists sought to supplement Marxism with other intellectual movements, most notably psychoanalysis, from the 1930s in order to respond to the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in the face of the continued presence and morphing shape of capitalism (Sharpe, 2004: 10). In particular, the Frankfurt school turned to psychoanalytic conceptions of culture to explain the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. As Žižek states;
“ In the history of Marxism, the reference to psychoanalysis played a precise strategic role: psychoanalysis was expected to “close the gap” by explaining why, despite the presence of ‘objective’ conditions for the revolutionary transformation, individuals willingly persisted in their enslavement to the ruling ideology” (Zizek, 1998: 235)
If this could be described as the first phase of ‘psycho-Marxism’, according to Miklitsch, the second phase is dominated by Louis Althusser’s structuralist revision of Marxism. Althusser’s return to Marx through psychoanalysis was the first to be dominated by Lacan, rather than Freud. As such, it cultivated a re-reading of Freud as well, framed in Lacanian terms. Lacan had already re-read Freud apres-coup via the turn to language of the latter half of the 20th century, characterised by the structuralist and post-structuralist movements. The focus on language as a structuring element of the human psyche has made psychoanalysis a necessarily sociological investigation, one that could be integrated with Marxism not by way of adding a theory of the psyche, as in Freudian Marxism, but rather as an equal contribution to a theory of intersubjectivity.
Despite these developments, Psycho-Marxism in all its forms has not been able to envisage a movement beyond capitalism, which does not fall pray to the traps of totalitarian socialism, as Žižek himself acknowledges;
"This is our situation today; after the breakdown of the Marxist notion that capitalism itself generates the force that will destroy it in the guise of the proletariat, none of the critics of capitalism, none of those who describe so convincingly the deadly vortex into which the so-called process of globalisation is drawing us, has any well-defined notion of how we can get rid of capitalism. In short, I am not preaching a simple return to the old notions of class struggle and socialist revolution: the question of how it is really possible to undermine the global capitalist system is not a rhetorical one- maybe it is not really possible, at least not in the foreseeable future"(Zizek, 1999: 352-353)
While Žižek’s later work can be firmly located within this project, Žižek himself rarely systematically reflects on the genealogy of his work (Sharpe, 2004: 9). Nonetheless, Žižek’s work can be located in the tradition of Western Marxism, inherited from the Frankfurt school. Žižek, however, rarely discusses the Frankfurt school, and repeatedly disavows the status of ‘Cultural Studies’, a discipline established largely through the Frankfurt school.
Despite this rejection of Cultural Studies, perhaps Žižek’s most accepted role as a Marxist is as a theorist of capitalist consumer ideology, culture and enjoyment (Sharpe, 2005:9). Instead of the Frankfurt school, the tradition of psycho-Marxism which Žižek has most followed is Althusser, who was for a time banished to the theoretical netherlands (in part by his own critique) before being rehabilitated by Žižek, most notably in The Sublime Object of Ideology (Miklitsch, 1998: 228). Here, Žižek argues that Althusser’s work has been disavowed, particularly the debate between Althusser and Lacan, and masked by the division between Habermas and Foucault, because Althusser is the traumatic kernel that must be excluded from modern philosophy because of its association with radical Lacanian ethics, which break with the hegemonic logic of post-Marxist anti-essentialism (Zizek, 1989: 1).
Post-Marxism has structured both the intellectual and political world since Žižek began publishing in English. These publications, beginning in 1989, came after the fall of the Berlin wall and the associated collapse of communism in Eastern Europe (Sharpe, 2004), and notably after the publication of Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, which largely defined the post-Marxist discipline. As Žižek himself states, after the demise of actually existing Marxism, psycho-Marxism has taken on a different role. Instead of defensively supplementing Marxism, Post-Marxist psychoanalysis instead focuses on the role of the political, working with Laclau’s notion that ‘society doesn’t exist’, that is, that society is characterised by an unsymbolisable antagonism that prevents the fullness of society. Thus, any kind of essentialism, including Marxist historical materialism, is rejected.
For Laclau, and others working in his discursive arena, any reference to Marxism is limited only to the Marxist tradition. In contrast, Žižek’s use of Marxism attempts to restore the fullness of the tradition, even if this restoration occurs via a negatively charged ontological position which rejects strict Marxist essentialism. Instead, Žižek attempts to rehabilitate Marxist critique of political economy as a form of anti-capitalism political intervention by reference to a different kind of essentialism; the Lacanian Real.
The first hints of Žižek’s affinity with Marxism, occur in The Sublime Object of Ideology when he contends that for Lacan, Marx invented the symptom (Zizek, 1989: 11-53). Marx’s ‘discovery’ of the symptom lies in his identification of a place with no place within a universal entity. Bourgeois ideology identifies this place as an external/contingent aberration to the normal functioning of capital, but, vitally, Marx contends that this symptomatic element contains the Truth of capital. As an example of this interpretative procedure, Žižek examines the relationship between freedom and labour. In capitalism, all men are free; there exists no formal inequality between citizens. However, as part of this freedom, workers are free to sell their labour on the market. This necessary act, without which there would be no formal/abstract freedom, removes the freedom of those selling their labour. This notion of a particular element that subverts its own universal foundation is later developed in the Lacanian notion of a symptom. Comparable examples are also found in private property (we are all free to own private property, but because others own private property, the majority are not able own property as a means of production and are forced to sell their labour).
According to Žižek, however, Marx’s mistake was to attempt to remove the symptom, yet maintain capitalist productivity in an attempt to produce a utopian socialism. This attempt at positivisation, which also affects the Marxist notions of commodity fetishism and ideology, is an incommensurable barrier between psychoanalysis and several elements of Marxist theory. Conversely, Žižek notes the fundamental homology between the logics of surplus value (Marx/capital) and surplus enjoyment (Lacan/subjectivity), although he reminds the reader that this link is not one made by Marx, who was historically unaware of the ‘turn to language’ which has produced this homology.
Žižek’s usage of Lacanian concepts, however, always comes with a Lacanian twist. This ‘twist’ is controversial, often moving the terms outside of strict Marxist usage. Class is an example of this movement. Žižek’s use of class signalled an increasing move into the Marxist tradition. His utilisation of class, however, differs markedly from the classical Marxist definition. Žižek resists any positivisation of class, instead considering it to be a modality of the Lacanian Real, that is, a hitch that all symbolisations struggle to integrate. This hitch is then excluded from the discursive horizon, thus becoming a positive factor for other discourses.However, Žižek’s use of class has been controversial. Some critics contend that Žižek does not adequately define his concept of class (Devenney, 2007: 54; Homer, 2001: 14; Sharpe, 2004: 203-4), others argue that Žižek’s Lacanian version of class is incommensurable with the Marxist tradition from which it stems and thus renders it politically redundant (Laclau, 2000: 206; Robinson & Tormey, 2005: 95-96).
In response, I seek to intervene in this gap – whilst acknowledging the relative salience of the critical positions - by suggesting that class operates in four intertwined iterations. The first is the failure of class relation; class as a modality of the Real. The second is the repression of the necessary exclusion which occurs in actually existing class relationships. This repression is class as the concrete universal. Because there is no possible translation between the concrete universal and the associated abstract universal imaginary (the signifiers and images which cohere our common constructions of shared social life) the affect of the concrete universal is also the Real (in terms of the parallax gap within the universal totality). Finally we have class as it appears within the abstract universal. In this sense the meaning of ‘class’ is determined by a hegemonic battle. Consequently, part of the difficulty of utilising class is the discursive positions into which it fits. Conversely, identifying the most salient of these positions is a vital task for any instantiation of Marxism which hopes to make a radical intervention in the capitalist system.
6. Chapter Plan
1. Introduction (5000 words)
2. Literature Review (15,000 words)
In this chapter I will review the background literature for my project, seeking to set the context for my inquiry. Specifically I seek to construct a basis for the core debates in this thesis. Essentially, the problems for using psychoanalysis for political enquiry, the problems of western marxism and the lack of radical conceptions of capitalism
a. Psychoanalytic Theory
b. Psychoanalysis and Politics
c. Progressions in Marxist theory
d. Psychoanalysis and Marxism
e. Contemporary perspectives on capitalism
f. Slavoj Žižek
3. Methodology/Conceptual foundations (20,000 words)
In this Chapter I will seek to outline the theoretical foundations of my investigation. These contours are largely shaped by Žižek. As such, the chapter will be directed towards a discussion of the key categories of his work in terms of my investigation in capitalism and the prospectives for political psychoanalysis.
a. Žižek
i. Ontology, the Real and influences
ii. Subjectivity
iii. Universality
iv. Ideology
v. Žižek’s theory of capitalism and Marxism
4. What is capitalism? (25,000 words)
Supported by discursive investigations into concrete areas of capitalism, this chapter seeks to answer one of the core questions of the thesis, ‘What is Capitalism?’ This is not a matter of mapping capitalism, but rather understanding the structures of capitalist discourse and ideology. This chapter will most likely be strongly supported by Žižek’s work, although investigating an area where Žižek’s work has not be applied in detail.
a. Investigation of the structure of 21st century capitalism, informed by my own critical take on Žižek’s psycho-marxism
5. Acting against capitalism (25,000 words)
Given the conclusions reached in Chapter 4, how can we act meaningfully against capitalism? This debate looks to reach some conclusion in regards to the normative deficit in post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. As such it seeks to go beyond the co-ordinates of Žižek’s work. This chapter also considers the ethical status of capitalism itself.
a. Psychoanalytic theories of the political/ethics/normativity
b. Žižek’s form of political intervention
c. Alenka Zupancic
d. Rethinking the notion of surplus
6. Conclusion (5000 words)
7. Stages of Inquiry
Establish frame of reference (Completed 2007)
Žižek
Generate specific research questions (2007)
Undertake literature review in regards to those questions (partially complete)
Wider literature review – Feb- Oct 2008 (suspension for overseas travel, April/May 2008)
Psychoanalysis (Feb-Mar 08)
i. Freud (Feb)
ii. Lacan (March)
Political psychoanalysis (2006/7)
Marxism (June/July 08)
Marxism and Psychoanalysis (Aug-Oct 08)
i. Freud and Marx (Aug)
ii. The Frankfurt School (Aug/Sept)
iii. Fredric Jameson (Oct)
iv. Žižek (2007)
Write up Chapter 2 (Literature Review) –Nov 2008
Write up Chapter 3 (Conceptual framework) – Dec/Jan 2009
What is signified by ‘Capitalism’? – Feb- May 2009
Theoretical application
Discursive examination of the structures and exegencies of capitalism
Write up Chapter 4 (What is signified by ‘Capitalism’?) – Jun 2009
Acting against capitalism – July- Sept 2009
The discpline of political psychoanalysis in the context of capitalism
Ethics of psychoanalysis
i. Alenka Zupancic
ii. Rethinking the notion of surplus
Write up Chapter 5 (Acting against Capitalism) – Oct 2009
Rewrite Chapters 2 & 3 – Nov 2009
Write Introduction and Conclusion – Dec 2009
Editing/Tidying Up – Jan- Feb 2010
Finish Date: March 1, 2010 (including two month suspension, April/May 2008)
8. List of publications and Presentations
Publications
Symptomatic Readings: Žižekian theory as a discursive strategy (Forthcoming, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Feburary 2008)
Howling at a Concrete Moon: Introduction to the Graduate Edition of IJZS (Forthcoming, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Feburary 2008)
Presentations
Capitalism and Ideological Critique, Social of Social and Cultural Studies Post-Graduate Conference September 2007, Massey University
'I Have A Hat, But I Have No Rabbit" Žižek, Capitalism And
Ideological Critique, The Australian Sociological Association and Sociological Association of Aoteroa New Zealand Joint Conference, Dec 2007, Auckland University
9. Bibilography
Bellamy, E., J. (1993). Discourses of impossibility: Can psychoanalysis be political. Diacritics, 23(1), 24-38.
Boucher, G., Glynos, J., & Sharpe, M. (2005). Traversing the Fantasy; Critical Responses to Slavoj Zizek. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Bowman, P., & Stamp, R. (Eds.). (2007). The Truth of Zizek. London: Continuum.
Brockelman, T. (2003). The failure of the radical democratic imaginary: Zizek versus Laclau and Mouffe on vestigial utopia. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 29(2).
Browning, D. S. (1991). Can Psychoanalysis Inform Ethics? If So, How? In E. Wallwork (Ed.), Psychoanalysis and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Butler, J., Laclau, E., & Zizek, S. (2000). Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. Verso: London.
Butler, R. (2005). Slavoj Zizek: Live Theory. New York: Continuum.
Butler, R., & Stephens, S. (Eds.). (2005). Interrogating the Real. London: Continuum.
Butler, R., & Stephens, S. (Eds.). (2006). The Universal Exception: Selected Writings, Volume Two. London: Continuum.
Daly, G. (1999a). Ideology and it's paradoxes: Dimensions of Fantasy and Enjoyment. Journal of Political Ideologies, 4(2).
Daly, G. (1999b). Politics and the Impossible: Beyond Psychoanalysis and Deconstruction. Theory, Culture and Society, 16(4), 75-98.
Daly, G., & Zizek, S. (2004). Conversations with Zizek. London: Polity Press.
Dean, J. (2006). Zizek's Politics. New York: Routledge.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1977). Anti-Oedipus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. New York: Viking Press.
Devenney, M. (2001). Towards and Ethics of Incommensurability. Strategies, 14(2).
Devenney, M. (2007). Zizek's Passion for the Real. In P. Bowman & R. Stamp (Eds.), The Truth of Zizek. London: Continuum.
Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Freud, S. (1922). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Boni and Liveright Publishers.
Freud, S. (1930). Civilisation and its Discontents. In M. Calarco & P. Atterton (Eds.), The Continental Ethics Reader (pp. pp.233-239). New York: Routledge.
Freud, S. (1939). Moses and Monotheism. London: The Hogarth press and the Institute of psycho-analysis.
Glynos, J. (2001). The Grip of Ideology: A Lacanian approach to the theory of ideology. Journal of Political Ideologies, 6(2), 191-214.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Havard University Press.
Homer, S. (1996). Psychoanalysis, Representation, Politics: On the (im)possibility of a psychoanalytic theory of ideology? Paper presented at the Third Annual Conference of the Universities Association for Psychoanalytic Studies.
Homer, S. (2001). It's the political economy, stupid! On Zizek's Marxism. Radical Philosophy, 108(July/August).
Kay, S. (2003). Zizek : a critical introduction / Sarah Kay. Cambridge, UK : Malden, MA :: Polity ; Distributed in the USA by Blackwell Pub.,.
Laclau, E. (2000). Constructing Universality. In J. Butler, E. Laclau & S. Zizek (Eds.), Contingency, Hegemony, Universality. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2005). On populist reason / Ernesto Laclau. New York :: Verso,.
Laclau, E. (2006). Why constructing a people is the main task of radical politics. Critical Inquiry, 32.
Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy; Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Miklitsch, R. (1998). Introduction. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Myers, T. (2003). Slavoj Zizek. London: Routledge.
Parker, I. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction. London Pluto Press.
PCE. (2005). See Change: Learning and education for sustainability: Parlimentary Comissioner for the Environment.
Robinson, A. (2004). The Politics of Lack. BJPIR, 6.
Robinson, A., & Tormey, S. (2005). A Ticklish Subject? Zizek and the Future of Left Radicalism. Thesis Eleven, 80, 94-107.
Robinson, A., & Tormey, S. (2006). Zizek Marx: Sublime Object or a Plague of Fantasies. Historical Materialism, 14(3), 145-174.
Sharpe, M. (2004). Slavoj Zizek: A Little Piece of the Real. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1997). Ambigious Ideology and the Lacanian Twist. Journal for the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research, 8-9, 117-130.
Stavrakakis, Y. (1999). Lacan and the political. London: Routledge.
Wright, E., & Wright, E. (Eds.). (1999). The Zizek Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991a). For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1991b). Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (1994). The Spectre of Ideology. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Mapping Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1996). The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1997). The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1998). Psychoanalysis in Post-Marxism: The Case of Alain Badiou. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 97(2).
Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. Verso: London.
Zizek, S. (2001). What can Lenin Tell Us about Freedom Today? Rethinking Marxism, 13(2).
Zizek, S. (2002a). A Plea for Leninist Intolerance. Critical Inquiry, 28(2).
Zizek, S. (2002b). Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917. New York: Verson.
Zizek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Zizek, S. (Ed.). (1992). Everything you ever wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock. London: Verso.
Zupancic, A. (2000). Ethics of the real : Kant, Lacan / Alenka Zupancic. London ; New York :: Verso,.
Zupancic, A. (2006). The Concrete Universal and What Comedy can tell us about it. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Lacan: The Silent Partners. London: Verso.
[i] I have not read a lot of Jameson’s work, but as I have noted in Section Seven, I intend to include him within the thesis as a reader of Lacan and Marx. Indeed, I expect Jameson to become a central influence.
[ii] It is worth noting that Freud also turned to socio-political analysis in his later work (Freud, 1922: 206; 1930, 1939)
[iii] Lacan remained committed to psychoanalysis as a clinical discipline and the usage of psychoanalysis beyond the clincial patient continues to be controversial. Debate continues around the translation of psychoanalytic terms and ethics, which remain orientated towards the individual and analytical practice, to social life (Bellamy, 1993; Browning, 1991; Homer, 1996).
[iv] Lacan himself was divided on this point. He recognised, following Aristotle, that there are two definitions of revolution; the overthrow of the existing and a continual rotation around a central axis. This later definition is particularly pertinent for psychoanalytic theory as it illustrates how the appearance of change – the rotation of the wheel – can actually be a fundamental stability constituted around a disavowed exclusion.
[v] Žižek writes strongly against the discipline of desconstruction and its post-structuralist roots because of its ignorance of the stability caused by the Lacanian Real. Nonetheless, I have used to term here to signify Žižek’s political practice, which although different in method, has much the same aim as Derridian deconstruction.
[vi] Following Yannis Stavrakakis’ (Stavrakakis, 1999: 71) work on Lacanian political theory, I make a distinction here between politics – the administration of society within a pre-established framework of understanding – and the political, which constitutes the production of that framework. Whilst Žižek’s form of political philosophy may never construct strong positions in terms of the positiving horizons of administrative politics, it is able to enter the realm of the political and perform critiques of both those horizons and the economies of enjoyment at work within them.
[vii] This dialogue is best illustrated in the three-way debate between Laclau, Žižek and Judith Butler in the text Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (J. Butler, Laclau, & Zizek, 2000).
[viii] In this past year I have acted as a (co) guest editor for a graduate edition of this journal. The edition is due to be published early this year and contains two pieces of my work (see Section Eight)
[ix] The Real is one of three ‘orders’ that Lacan used to represent the structure of the psyche, the other two being the symbolic – the ‘discourse of the Other’ structured by the production of signifiers – and the imaginary – the identification with various images and signifiers in the name of an illusionary wholeness.
[x] Elsewhere Zizek has described this method as ‘ideological critique’. For the sake of clarity, in this document I will stick with short-circuit
[xi] My inital investigations have come to suggest that capitalism may be an empty signifier in the sense adopted by Laclau. That is, it structures a discourse, in this case, that of the economy without taking on a settled meaning. Thus capitalism becomes the site for political battles. However, I would like to argue, although this has not been formalised, that capitalism forms something of an empty signfying system. An emptying signfying system has a reproducable formalic system, something akin to the operation of language in the unconscious (Fink, 1995: 14-21)
[xii] Several interesting points occur from this analysis. These points will be explored further in Section Five.
[xiii] Although it worth noting that now that sweatshop labour is nonexistent within western economies, it is largely off the conceptual radar. When it is invoked, it is under the discourse of human rights, rather than as a point of economics, as if with a few adjustments ‘justice’ would be achieved. This example, I believe, asserts the necessity of the rehabilitation of the Marxist critique of political economy.
[xiv] There is a certain interchangability between these terms. As I shall expand on in Section Two, for Žižek the concrete universal is the necessary exclusion from an ideology. The concrete universal, however, is unable to be translated into the terms of the dominant ideology. Instead it appears as a gap, a hestitation within the ideological order. Thus, the concrete universal is not the Real, but it has a Real affect.
[xv] At this stage, perhaps the most difficult element of this question has been the framing of the question. Essentially, in this section I wish to investigate the possibilities for action against capitalism, assuming that the object to which I refer to as ‘capitalism’ needs to be replaced. As I get further into the literature I believe that the framing of this question should get easier.
[xvi] Indeed, in terms of action against capitalism from a psychoanalytic perspective, the literature is particularly light. Much of it consists of Žižek’s work on capitalism and his critics responses. That said, there is obviously a rich line of thought on political economy and anti-capitalism against which I will engage.
[xvii] I have to confess that the ethics of (Lacanian) psychoanalysis is an area in which I am weak. I have an understanding of the contours of the debate, but I do not understand the specifics. I look forward to expanding my knowledge in this area when I reach this section of the thesis.
[xviii] Sharpe’s text is an interesting one that I will seek to engage with in greater detail at a later date. Although I do not agree with many of Sharpe’s conclusions, in particular that Žižek is a Kantian (a strangely powerful insult in the world of psychoanalytic theory), the questions which drive his research, in particular Žižek’s conceptualisation of capitalism and his use of Marxist theory are very similar to mine. This similarity and discrepancy mean that I will have to entertain a detailed analysis of Sharpe’s work on Žižek.
[xix] ‘Disco-Marxism’ refers to the relatively recent combination of discourse theory and post-Marxism.
[xx] The status of a literature review in a theoretical-discursive thesis such as this is rather ambivalent. To some extent the whole thesis is a literature review in the sense that it is working with the knowledge of past theorists. On the other hand, a theoretical thesis avoids the descriptive nature of a literature review; while it may cover much of the same historical ground, the critical nature of a theoretical thesis means that a traditional ‘literature review’ is avoided.
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