Thesis update

Background

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

Zizek and Marx

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

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

Critiques of Zizek

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

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

Moving forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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