Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phd, 2007; The Beginning

This post marks the beginning of my writings for the year. It may be 4 months late, but we all know that numbers lie. Having finished my Master's thesis almost 5 months ago, it has taken me a long time together in regards to what I would like to spend the next 3 years doing. A considerable degree of the delay was caused because I already had my ideas together, having just raced to a finishing line. It has been, fortunately, necessary to both deconstruct and reconstruct myself (at least as Chris the academic. Cook, Macca, Honey and Chris the son all remain intact. God forbid they ever meet). Having gone through this process (to some degree- the light at the end of the tunnel may infact be me getting used to the light which remains in the tunnel) I find myself roughly where I started. Perhaps with some parts reconfigured, full of ambition(?) for the journey ahead.

So what is it that I want to achieve in this thesis, I ask my loyal reader (who also happens to be the loyal writer) My concern lays (or is it lies, I continue to be unsure of the difference) with capitalism and Lacanian social theory/philosophy. Capitalism because of the massive injustices I perceive (although labelling something 'injust' contradicts any notion of an anti-normative approach). Lacan (read Zizek given that I still haven't actually read any Lacan) because of it's ability to illuminate the operation of ideology within the logic of liberal capitalism. In particular through notions of ideological fantasy, symptom and concrete universality. What I need to work out is the manner in which I wish to combine Lacanian theory for an analysis of capital.

Four questions (amongst others) strike me;
- How does the logic of capital operate?
- What opportunities for change does this logic present?
- What method best exploits these opportunities?
- Why do any of it at all? Why would we want to change capitalism?

The first question should provide an answer (or a more developed question) for the last, although the issue of normativity is the gap which (silently) drives this research.

My intitative response to these questions is two fold. Firstly the logic of capitalism is such that symptoms are both produced and integrated in a complex relation of excess and lack. This relation is operationalised in both objet a and the symptom and maintained by ideological fantasy.

The identification of this logic leads to a somewhat secondary idea that capitalist logic can only be interrupted by the performance of an 'ethical' critique that destablises its ideological support. Perhaps the main hole here is whether the ethical can, or should, move into the realm of the normative/moral. That is, What is the status of the ethical within psychoanalytic politics;
-amoral (not related to morality)
-anti-moral (against the idea of morality)
-unmoral (recognising the status of the moral, but not entering into the discourse).
-moral (the ethical as a form of morality).

I am particularly interested in how these ideas would be applied in terms of the economic. What would it mean to have an 'ethical' normative stance on political economy for the bodies involved in reproducing capital? Especially given the consequences of economic 'failure' for those bodies involved.

But why the ethical and not the normative? Or at least, why the distinction between the two? The key issue here is; Why produce an 'ethical' critique of capitalism instead of a alternative normative economic conception?

I have two (related) answers for this question. The first is that normative alternatives are too easily integrated into the logic of capitalist ideology. The second is that if they are not integrated, capitalist ideology produces the alternative as a threat to the system. As is developed by Lacan, and within other modes of social theory, the stability of a system relies on its ability to reproduce threats to the system. An example of a threat to the system is Islam. In contrast, Green ideology has largely been integrated into the system. Overall, alternatives cannot avoid the capitalist hegemony. In this sense, although outside alternatives exist, there is no alternative to capitalism. All that enters its ever expanding realm act to ultimately maintain it stability. So, to come up with one answer to my question, an alternative moral approach can only end up reproducing that which it seeks to reproduce (in this particular, universal circumstance).

So there is no outside? No. There are alternative nodes from which battles can be pitched, but ultimately these alternative act only as a constitutive outside for capital, a threat which maintains its stability. This has been the (failed) appeal of the anti-capitalist campaigners at the beginning of the millenium. Hence, we can see that the outside to capital is not truly outside, because it is only outside in so much as it is reproduced by capital.

With the movement from normative to ethical, however, that possibility of change occurs, but only from an outside which exists inside capitalist ideology. The possibility of an ethical critique lies in an internal incommensurability; the symptom. Whilst these threats produce anxiety, they are generally well integrated back into the system. The role of the ethical is to destablise the process of displacing, or perhaps replacing, anxiety through a breakdown in ideological logic.

I hope to develop these issues further in the next couple of days (weeks). In particular both the difference between normativity and ethics, and exisiting positions on the status of capitalism and political responses to that status e.g. Is there an outside to capitalism