Žižek’s conception of universality is based on his version of dialectical materialist logic. The first element of this logic is normally well understood, but the materialism is often set aside. It is this materialism, however – the materialism of jouissance – that gives Žižek’s perspective on universality its analytic power. Žižek emphasises the need for a true Lacanian analysis to go beyond purely structural accounts of social life and enter into the realm of jouissance. Without the concept of jouissance and other positivisations of the Real, most notably fantasy, the Lacanian conceptual apparatus losses much of its explanatory power.
There are few better examples of the importance of the materialist position than the gap between Žižek’s work and that of fellow Lacanian political theorist Ernesto Laclau. Laclau and Žižek have been engaged in a long-running dialogue. This dialogue started from positions that were initially very similar, working within the general sphere of post-Marxist radical democracy. Although each took on the other’s work uncritically, there were, and continue to be, considerable political and theoretical similarities between Laclau and Žižek. These similarities are especially strong around the issue of universality, particularly noticeable in Laclau’s use of terms like discourse, hegemony and the empty signifier, all of which strongly resonate with the Lacanian notion of objet a. An affinity also exists between Laclau and Žižek’s interpretations of the negative effect that the Real has upon the social, worked out in their concepts of dislocation and antagonism.
Žižek, however, has increasingly moved away from the post-Marxist, radical democratic emphasis that continues to characterise Laclau’s project. Žižek has made this move because he believes that such an approach, which does not move beyond the bounds of interpretation, is unable to displace global capitalism. Instead, Žižek has placed more emphasis on the issue of the economy and, more importantly for this debate, Žižek has shown how any political movement which deals solely at the level of language, and thus interpretation, is a limited one. Instead, the political traction that is needed for social transformation requires that one engages with the roles that fantasy and jouissance play in the constitution of political positions. This chapter will review the limits of the Laclauian approach and consider the value of fantasy and jouissance for political analysis. This chapter will than move on the relationship between universality and jouissance, embodied by the concrete universal and the symptom.
Laclau’s interpretation of Lacan
Laclau’s particular use of Lacanian categories has incited considerable debate (see J. Butler, Laclau, & Žižek, 2000; Daly, 1999a, 1999b; Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003; Laclau, 2003; Stavrakakis, 1997; Stavrakakis, 1999). Glynos and Stavrakakis both acknowledge the theoretical affinities between Laclau’s work and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Indeed both these authors suggest, and Laclau himself concurs, that Lacan’s influence on Laclau’s work has increased (Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003, p.111). This is readily apparent in Laclau’s use of Lacan’s negative ontology, as it pertains to the social/symbolic, and his sense that images of universality are constructed through discourse, hegemony, and the empty signifier. It is to these similarities between Laclau and Lacan that we shall now turn, before turning to the important differences between Laclau’s and Žižek’s readings of Lacan. Discourse and hegemony are the concepts most strongly shared by Laclau and Žižek. Discourse is Laclau’s primary concept; indeed his approach is labeled ‘Discourse theory’ (Torfing, 1999). Discourse is the linguistic totality around which social reality is constructed. Its fundamental premise is shared with Lacanian semiotics and developed from the shift that occurred in modern philosophy away from transcendentalism and towards language. The primary proposition of this shift was that the condition of possibility of any thought or action depends on the construction – through language – of a structured and meaningful field. This structured field is discourse (Laclau, 1993, p.431). Vitally, Laclau adds that the structured totality of discourse is never completely closed. This fundamental impossibility means that politics revolves around the battle to fix meanings in a discourse that can never be totally fixed. This battle for meanings, which in Discourse theory operates only in an interpretive sense, cannot bring wide ranging change, only small changes around a central axis. Only an intervention through the dislocatory power of the Real can force such a radical change. Nonetheless, the political significance of battles to fix meanings should not be underestimated, though it needs to be remembered that such battles get played out within the existing terms of a discourse and thus the outcomes circumscribed by such discourse.Laclau labels any partial fixation of a discourse ‘hegemonic’. A hegemonic discourse fixes meanings around nodal points. Laclau labels these nodal points ‘empty signifiers’, a concept that we shall return to in further detail below. Hegemony is a key link between Laclau and Žižek because of its similarity with Žižek’s conception of universality. Laclau contends that hegemony occurs through particular elements being presented as having universal address (Laclau, 2000b, p.207). Thus a straight translation is possible between Laclau’s notion of hegemony and Žižek’s concept of the abstract universal. However, as we shall soon develop, Laclau’s limited embrace of the Real and of dialectical materialism means that he is unable to view universality as a totality in the same manner as Žižek. Rather his conception of universality, as hegemony, is limited to the abstract universal. Laclau does develop a notion of the constitutive outside, similar to Žižek’s idea of the universal exception, but this concept does not have the same intimate link to the abstract universal as Žižek’s ‘exception’. We shall return to this point latter in this chapter.Laclau’s most productive contribution to psychoanalytic political theory is his work around the empty signifier, which finds its correlate in Lacan’s objet a. The empty signifier allows Laclau to discuss the relationship between the discursive and non-discursive domains. Empty signifiers are produced where the limit-point of a discourse appears, at the point where the discourse comes into contact with other discourses and divergences appear that need to be sutured. As such, the empty signifier signifies the emergence of an absence. Various political communities compete to ‘hegemonise’ the empty signifier with content that is particular to their own life-styles and interests. As the place holder of the presence of absence, the empty signifier takes the structural role of the universal. Indeed, the empty signifier becomes a nodal point, if not the nodal point, of the abstract universal imaginary.
Divergences between Laclau and Lacan/ Žižek
Despite the similarity between Laclau and Žižek’s work, there are also some notable absences in Laclau’s embrace of Lacan, particularly the concepts of fantasy and jouissance. These absences cannot be easily ignored, particularly because of their centrality to Lacan’s thought. Indeed, Glynos and Stavrakakis argue:
The problem is that, without taking into account enjoyment, the whole Lacanian framework loses most of its explanatory force. For example, what can possibly account for the constitutively of desire if jouissance is not accepted as the absent cause of human desire? Furthermore, such enjoyment helps us answer, in a more concrete way, what is at stake in socio-political identification and identity formation, suggesting that support of social fantasies is partially rooted in the jouissance of the body. What is at stake in these fields, according to Lacanian theory, is not only symbolic coherence and discursive closure, but also enjoyment, the jouissance animating human desire. (2003, p, 120)
Laclau does embrace the concept of the Real, but only in a limited and negative manner, one that does not, for him, necessitate the use of fantasy and jouissance. Rather Laclau uses the Real, often implicitly, as a limit to the discursive, an internal limit which prevents his work from falling in pure idealism (Glynos and Stavrakakis 2003, p.113). Laclau did not always posit the Real as in internal limit to the social. The fundamental thesis of his seminal text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy was the post-Marxism caveat ‘society does not exist’, but this was considered to be caused by external antagonisms faced by the universal imaginaries of political communities, rather than the internal limit-point of those imagined horizons, that is, the Real. It has only been through dialogue with Žižek that Laclau has come to differentiate between internal limits to a discourse (for him, dislocation, for Žižek, the Real) and limits that are external to such (antagonism).Thus, for Glynos and Stavrakakis, Laclau and Lacan have very similar positions in relation to the manner in which the Real disrupts symbolisation; dislocation, as the negative effect of the Real, is a good indication of this embrace (p.116). By contrast, Laclau does not acknowledge the positive, psychical effects that the Real has on symbolisation and the construction of political positions, that is, fantasy and jouissance. These effects represent attempts to positivise the lack that the Real causes within the symbolic order. For Žižek, the subject experiences these through objet a, in the drive of desire and the desire to fulfill drive, with objects that will give a sense of cohesion and coherence (for example, political ideologies). Such attempts to obtain fullness are, of course, always fantasmatic. At the same time as fantasy signals that limits exist to a universalising imaginary, it attempts to fill the void that those limit-points create within the subject.
Consequently, a vital distinction exists between the empty signifier in Laclau’s work and objet a in Žižek’s: both signal the presence of an interminable absence within the symbolic order and the subject. A politically significant difference exists between them, however, insofar as objet a contains elements of all three Lacanian registers (of the imaginary, symbolic and Real). Alternatively, Laclau’s notion of the empty signifier acknowledges the Real and then, staying with Lacan’s terminology, conflates the symbolic and imaginary. The effect of this is to understate (at best) the role of affect in the construction of discursive positions (that is, the impact of the imaginary’s quest for wholeness). Glynos and Stavrakakis suggest that Laclau’s conflation of the imaginary and symbolic levels occurs because of Laclau’s avoidance of the notion of jouissance. They contend that Laclau ignores jouissance because his work is framed in purely formal and structural terms rather than a substantial focus which includes the body, which is the site of jouissance (Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003, p.119).Thus while for Laclau the empty signifier fulfills the same function as objet a, it is a purely discursive concept filling a Real lack. For Laclau, the influence of the Real upon the empty signifier does not have the same kind of materiality, through jouissance, as with objet a. Nor is the empty signifier an object of fantasy like objet a in Žižek’s work. Because of these exclusions, the empty signifier does not have the explanatory value of objet a in terms of the manner in which a discourse or ideology gains a grip on the subject. Nonetheless despite these limitations the empty signifier does have some discursive explanatory value. This value lies in its structural location, representing the gaps that persist within discourse, held open by a class of signifier that is necessarily empty. Conversely, as has already been noted, Laclau does not attribute to the empty signifier the same imaginary and Real role as with Lacan’s objet a. Nevertheless, because of its structure value, the term ‘empty signifier’ will continue to be used throughout this text, with the proviso that it takes on all the meaning of objet a, but is projected for a more specific use, that of representing a constitutive gap within a discursive structure.
In a similar vein, Žižek dismisses deconstructive and post-structuralist theory because it overlooks the jouissantic excess which operates in discourse (Daly, 1999b, p.80). In doing so, Žižek contends that the post-structuralist approach places too much emphasis on the semiotic contingency of the discursive realm rather than the interminable impress of the Real upon the human condition, regularly experienced through trauma and enjoyment (p.76).Trauma and enjoyment are part of the non-discursive ‘beyond’ to the social that Laclau rejects. Without the concept of jouissance, however, it is difficult to consider what would be animating the play of the social and the symbolic order in the Laclauian conception of discourse (Daly, 1999a, p.227). This is the fundamental question for all theories of ideology, universality or indeed any play of the social; what accounts for the grip with which an ideology holds a subject? (Glynos, 2001, p.199). Glynos and Stavrakakis, in their discussion paper on Laclau’s embrace of Lacan, contend:
The importance psychoanalysis attaches to the notion of the Real qua fantasmatically structured jouissance suggests that symptomal analyses of the discursive or interpretative kind, though perhaps a necessary prerequisite, are often not sufficient to effect a displacement in the social subject’s psychic economy. (Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003, p.122)
From this perspective, the concept of jouissance is needed in order to produce an adequate account of discourse. In reply, Laclau acknowledges the role of jouissance but argues that all of the concepts that Glynos and Stavrakakis state are missing from his work are present in his use of the term discourse, although Laclau acknowledges that his use of many Lacanian terms is often only implied (Laclau, 1993, p.278). Glynos and Stavrakakis, he continues, unadvisedly produce a duality of discourse and jouissance, whereas it is more productive to construct the two as a dualism, approached through a notion that discourse comprises a ‘relational complex’ (p.283). Such an approach is, I believe, mistaken. While Laclau argues that jouissance and fantasy are tacitly included within his concepts of hegemony and discourse, his work loses an explanatory thrust that is available within Žižek’s explicit appropriation of these Lacanian concepts because Laclau does not specifically focus on the postivised elements of the Real, specifically fantasy and jouissance. These concepts are not additions to the symbolic, but rather they condition the symbolic; they are the very material pre-condition upon which the symbolic is constructed. Therefore, they cannot be simply implicitly assumed within the realms of the symbolic or discourse, but instead should be considered explanatory factors in their own right. Despite his assertions to the contrary, by only implicitly acknowledging the materialism of the Real, Laclau’s work lacks the explanatory force evident in Žižek.
My reply to Laclau’s position suggests that Žižek’s form of psychopolitical analysis provides greater potential for inducing socio-political change than one that approaches discourse as a psychically neutral entity that can be handled in a methodologistic manner. That said, Žižek’s political analysis does lack the textual subtly that Laclau provides when discussing the plurality of discourses which circulate around the lack that constitutes the social. It is in this role that I consider Laclau’s work most useful. Two concepts in particular that Laclau has developed – which have been introduced above – are productive for political analysis; antagonism and dislocation. Productively, they enable analysis to differentiate between socio-political tensions that emerge as a consequence of the ahistorical, structural void (marked by the notions of the Real, objet a, and jouissance) and those divisions that occur as a consequence of contingent, cultural differences, this being an issue with which Žižek continues to wrestle (Žižek, 2000b, p.308-316).
Advantages of Laclau’s approach: Antagonism(s)
Antagonism refers, for Laclau, to the effects of culturally contingent differences that produce limit-points to/within the objectivity of particularistic discursive positions (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.122). As such, antagonisms introduce a principle of negativity into discourse. It is at the point of antagonism that hegemonic battles for meaning are waged (Howarth & Stavrakakis, 2000, p.9). Thus antagonisms are vital for politics as they are the point at which meanings can be changed by interests and forces outside of the prevailing discourse. Although Laclau and Žižek notionally agree with the concept of antagonism, Laclau’s political position does not extend beyond the idea that culturally-contingent antagonisms alter social meanings. Instead, his initial approach to this issue appeared to assume the existence of an elemental void (the Real), whose dislocating effects are of no significance relative to the antagonisms that develop between actually existing socio-political positions.
A conflation of antagonism and dislocation is not an uncommon error. In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe assumed that antagonism and dislocation were one in the same, considering antagonism to be responsible for the impossibility of society (Torfing, 1999, p.128). This position rides a fine line with the post-structuralist definition. Here it is the presence of the ‘Other’ which prevents the full identity of the subject or system; the existence of the capitalist, for example, is antagonistic for the worker, the obstacle to the formation of a proletariat that is ‘for itself’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.125). This, however, assumes that the impossibility of society is always external, rather than internal to society, that the locus of impossibility is proto-transcendental to society. As Žižek points out, what is negated in the concept of social antagonism is the negation that has always already occurred to discourse by a force – the Real – that is both prior yet wholly internal to it, that exists in a condition with the social, as Lacan put it, of extimacy (Žižek, 2005a) .
As a consequence of Žižek’s argument, Laclau has since move beyond the post-structuralist position, adopting Žižek’s critique of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Žižek, 2005a, p.271-285). Here Žižek suggests that it is important to distinguish between a form of antagonism that functions as an a priori limit-point to the social, the very impossibility around which the social is based, and a form of antagonism that operates as conflict between subject positions (p.276). This ‘double’ of antagonism means that while the latter antagonism may very well be an actual antagonism for the subject, at the same time it is just a foil for the true, constitutive antagonism. The ideological illusion in operation here is that if the antagonism between subjects is removed, then lack would also be thought to disappear. That elemental lack does not disappear, however, and, instead, appears with naked force when the subject’s defences against it are removed. Thus Žižek suggests ‘(I)t is precisely in the moment when we achieve victory over the enemy in the antagonistic struggle that we experience antagonism in its most radical dimension’ (p. 274). Žižek’s point is that it is the Real which is responsible for the impossibility of society, rather than historically contingent antagonisms. In response, Laclau developed the concept of ‘dislocation’.
Dislocation, as an ‘unrepresentable’ moment, draws upon the notion of the Real to a greater degree than the concept of antagonism, the latter referring more to subjects’ attempts to assuage the initial dislocation that is caused by the Real (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.126). Thus dislocation stages, through repeated failures (for example, of socio-political policy to resolve disputes between diverging social interests) the elemental lack around which the social is based. Dislocation, by being in itself unrepresentable, is exactly what shows the limits of every discursive form, of each one’s inability to represent once and for all the essence of the social, to symbolise the Real of the social in a definite way (p.124). Thus, a dislocation occurs when events happen that cannot be domesticated or integrated into the existing structure of the discourse (Torfing, 1999, p.301). In light of its thorough-going disruption to prevailing discourse, dislocation offers the prospect of radical social change, pointing to the political significance of situations such as when a discourse is confronted with an example that it cannot bear. To return to a previous discussion, this ‘unbearable’ example is, in Žižek’s terms, the constitutive exception to the universal, that is, its symptom, the concrete universal.
The difference between antagonism and dislocation turns upon their diverging conceptualisatons of the Real. Dislocation presupposes that the Real is internal to discourse, disrupting a discursive formation from within. The notion of antagonism, alternatively, sees the effect of the Real lying in the limits that become imposed because of conflicts that occur between incommensurable discursive positions. Antagonism operates only within the existing limits of the discourses that are used to map the social and thus poses no Real threat to the structure of the social (Homer, 2001, p.9-10). It brings about change only in the sense of a revolution of revolving sameness, a multiplicity of responses to the same fundamental lack. Antagonism thus has the effect of forestalling the radical kinds of social transformation that are forestaged by dislocation. Antagonisms negate alternative points of view in addition to occluding the lack upon which the development of multiple options depends. The ability of social conflicts to generate a range of possible positions, say over a given policy issue, covers up that initial lack. In Lacanian terms, antagonism vehicularises objet a, giving it solid form through the production of fantasies about the many and various resolutions to conflict situations that might emerge. The subject thus receives jouissance from the very presence of an antagonism because it offers to them the prospect of social fullness; if only the antagonism were to disappear, then true society would be possible.
The use of Laclau in further argumentation
The above differentiation between antagonism and dislocation enables us to draw out a subtlety within the concept of antagonism that was not previously evident: we can differentiate between three different types of antagonism. The first is the condition of ‘pure antagonism’, as represented by Laclau’s’ idea of dislocation. Secondly, there exists ‘external antagonism’, Žižek’s response to Laclau’s notion of antagonism. External antagonisms are the fantasmatic postulations of an element that is responsible for the failure of society. Finally, we can almost return to Laclau’s original position of antagonism – as that which is responsible for the impossibility of society – as developed in his early notion of a ‘social antagonism’. Social antagonisms are the deadlocks that occur within the social fabric. Social antagonisms are not necessarily fantasised external antagonisms, although they are often presented in this manner. However, the main affect of social antagonisms is to lock into conflict competing perspectives between which no common ground can be found, e.g. the clash between workers and capitalists can be considered a social antagonism because there is no common ground or point of translation between the positions, despite various fantasmatic efforts to suture this gap, such as the trade union movement. This particular antagonism can be posited as an external antagonism and might indeed be so in some cases e.g. where the capitalist is preventing the worker from achieving his full identity. Nonetheless, this masks the fundamental clash of incommensurable forces. The idea of a true social antagonism is extended further in the following chapter, particularly in relation to Žižek’s notion of political parallax.
The triad of positions around antagonism suggest that there is an intimate link between jouissance, objet a, fantasy, antagonism, and symptom. The symptom – say, for example, climate change – emerges within a political community as the object-cause of desire (objet a), as the sublime object that both embodies the affect of the Real, yet also stands in for the lack of Real, providing jouissance through the impossible prospect of a suture. In the case of the symptom, it becomes an objet a because fantasy constructs the symptom as that which is standing in the way of Jouissance. Thus the symptom becomes an external antagonism; the symptom is presented as a ‘straw’ enemy, the ‘Other’ that is preventing the full expression of society and the abstract universal imaginary. Fantasy can then extend to the idea that the society’s ills are the result of the Other’s presence. The symptom thus becomes a contingent object that can be removed; its cause is presented as an external antagonism.
In ideological fantasy, the removable of the antagonism is projected as bringing about the eradication of the symptom. This is, however, a necessarily false fantasy – the removal of the antagonism will merely expose the universal imaginaries, that bind together the political community, to the dislocatory effect of the Real: the eradication of the supposed cause of division will remove the unconscious supplement upon which the universal imaginary depends for its form, exposing the community’s self-perception to its own inconsistency. As a consequence, a socially important discourse requires the presence of antagonism and its symptom so that stability can be maintained. Moreover, they become the points of enjoyment, of jouissance, that bind subjects to the discourse.As an illustration, the hegemonic global capitalist imaginary is that of ‘development’, which has the built-in assumption that all nations have the capacity to be ‘developed’. As will be further argued in this thesis, particularly in chapter seven, which focuses on the discourse of poverty, this is not the case. Rather, ‘developing’ countries are the concrete universal of capitalism: they are required to stay in poverty for the maintenance of the global capitalist system; they maintain the over-supply of labour which produces the low wages and low costs of agricultural produce that global capital relies on for the support of an ever-increasing desire for consumption within the so-called developed world. For this capitalist imaginary to remain, its fundamental impossibility must be displaced to an external cause. Thus the symptoms of its failures, such as poverty, are posited as the result of an antagonism, such as corruption in Third World governments. These symptoms and antagonisms become a point of enjoyment for the capitalist subject; it dilutes their sense of responsibility for these ills and thus maintains the hegemonic capitalist horizons. To this end, the imaginary of fully globalised development for everyone can be sustained. Without this antagonism, the system would be faced with the full dislocatory effect of the Real, in the form of the concrete universal, that is, the persistence of structurally-induced poverty.
In conclusion, Žižek argues that the discursive structures of ‘the universal’ exist through supports that are material in effect – fantasy, desire, and more particularly, jouissance. In so doing, he notes the value of Laclau’s notions of antagonism and dislocation, particularly when coupled with the ideas of discourse, hegemony and the empty signifier. Indeed, Žižek has described social antagonism as ‘perhaps the most radical breakthrough in modern social theory’ (Žižek, 2005a, p.271), because, in developing the concept of antagonism, Laclau has been able to incorporate the Lacanian Real as a tool for social and ideological analysis (Žižek, 1989, p.162). That said, it is evident that his appropriation of the Lacanian Real limits its effects to that of a primal lack that comprises the necessary precondition for the play of textual multiplicity. In doing so, Laclau is able to demonstrate why social constructions are necessarily contingent. That said, he cannot then explain why symbolic formations sustain themselves in spite of this contingency. Žižek, in contrast, emphasizes the productive effects that the Real continues to have upon the constitution of political positions, ‘long after’ its a priori dislocation of those positions, particularly through the machinations of fantasy, desire, and jouissance. More importantly, in acknowledging the materiality of universality through an enlarged conception of the Real, Žižek not only exposes the political makeup of social constructions, but also the political nature of the non-contingent and material exception upon which these social constructions are based. When developed against a background of Hegelian dialectics, these notions give rise to a rebirthed notion of universality. It is to the materiality of this universality that we shall now turn.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
2. Fundamental Concepts and Theories
Orienting Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Relation to the Political
This chapter introduces and reviews the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis in relation to the argumentation developed in this thesis. These concepts do not reflect the full range of psychoanalytic terms, nor their ‘true’ meaning. Although it is important to clarify the manner in which a concept will be used, the uneven history and internally ruptured nature of psychoanalysis is such that definite definitions are elusive. Instead, the terms will be defined in the manner they will be used for the task of political analysis. The most popularised basis for such analysis is Slavoj Žižek’s appropriation of Lacanian psychoanalysis, which evaluates the possibilities for radical socio-political change, specifically in relation to the economy. Particularly salient for this approach are the concepts of the Real, jouissance, desire, fantasy, objet a and universality, especially the category of the universal he calls ‘the universal exception’. Before entering into a discussion of these concepts, however, it is useful to examine the predominant influences on Žižek’s work, Lacan, Hegel, Laclau and Marx, in order to establish the context in which he operates.Žižek’s main influence has been Jacques Lacan; above all, theoretically Žižek is a Lacanian, although Žižek’s use of Lacan is orientated for political rather than clinical analysis. Lacan himself was not political; he was very sceptical about the prospect of revolutionary change, particularly radical change of the sort examined in this thesis. Lacan considered there to be two different meanings of the term ‘revolution’. The first mode of revolution is the overthrow of a government or social order, redirecting evolution, so to speak. It was the second, conservative meaning of revolution, however, on which Lacan placed more emphasis. Here, revolution is taken to mean a rotation around a single central axis (Ciaccia, 2005). This differentiation is seminal for understanding the psychoanalytic conception of social and political change. The latter definition of revolution suggests that while there may be an appearance of movement and some plurality of positions, these are simply responses to the same fundamental and impossible Real. Thus to break out of the conservative conception of revolution and into true political revolution and radical social change, one has to enter into the realm of this fundamental blockage, the Real. This thesis supports Žižek’s view that the concept of the Real, articulated through Žižek’s concept of universality, gives substantial leverage to a psychoanalytic political approach. Furthermore, this approach allows for the possibility of revolutionary political change.The Real thus emerges as a core psychoanalytic concept for all analyses of political change or stability. The Real, however, cannot be conceptualised outside of the other registers of Lacanian psychoanalysis; the symbolic – the place of the Other that is structured through the production of signifiers – and the imaginary, that is, the illusionary register of wholeness that emerges for the subject via their identification with the arena of images. Thus the Real is not an entity in itself, but rather a fundamental lack, an effect without a cause that can be observed only through the presence gaps within, of absence, in the symbolic and the imaginary orders. As the limit to signification, the effects of the Real provide the core analytical emphasis for psychoanalysis, through the negative ontology established by the limitations of language (through the effect of the Real upon the symbolic and the imaginary), through the positivisations of this limit in fantasy (which enables the social realm to appear consistent), and through jouissance (for Lacan, the only real substance that exists within social life).The most important consideration in terms of socio-political change, however, is the relationship between the Real and Žižek’s rehabilitated conception of universality. Railing against the increasing focus on particularism within postmodern thought, Žižek has sought to rehabilitate the concept of universality. This rehabilitation has occurred through a re-reading of the work of Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx and Georg Hegel, as well as a dialogue with post-Marxist discourse theorist, Ernesto Laclau. The universal, in its abstract form, is both impossible, in that it can never be fully constituted, and necessary, due to the need to avoid the naked experience of anxiety that is provoked by encounters with the Real. It is this dynamic contradiction, which produces an exception to the universal within the universal – that is, the element which is both part of the universal, yet subverts its horizon – which drives the dialectic process and out of which any possibility for political change will emerge.
The dynamic relationship between the universal and its exception informs the key theoretical hypothesis of this thesis; socio-political change that is capable of generating more than a refashioning of (a simple rotation around) existing alternatives occurs through the dynamic dialectic interactions of the universal (a construction of both the symbolic and the imaginary) and the effect of the Real, embodied by excluded elements of that universal. How the relationship that exists between the universal, the particular, and the universal exception might best be interpreted has been a key point of debate between Žižek and Laclau. Žižek’s interchange with Laclau has been vitally important in his reformulation of a theory of the universal. As a consequence, discussion of the influences upon Žižek will begin with Laclau.
Žižek and Laclau
Laclau and Žižek have very similar theoretical orientations, combining the insights of psychoanalysis, Marxism and post-structuralism, although both disavow the continued influence of the latter (Žižek & Daly, 2004, p.46). Laclau and Žižek have been central in generating a form of political analysis that draws upon Lacanian psychoanalysis. That said, as we shall soon observe, these approaches have notable differences, mainly around how the Real is to be conceptualised. Laclau and Žižek each agree on the fundamental importance of the radically negative character of social life, exemplified in the core maxim of Laclau’s seminal text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: ‘society does not exist’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). This formulation, which correlates with the Lacanian ideas that ‘the big Other doesn’t exist’ and that ‘there is no sexual relation’, has led both Laclau and Žižek to reject the prospect of positive utopian politics.
Despite this initial similarity in political positions and their shared theoretical allegiances, Laclau and Žižek now inhabit quite different positions on both counts. As such, a detailed analysis of the divergences between Laclau and Žižek is more than warranted to examine the political possibilities available from psychoanalytic theory. Of particular interest is the use – or in Laclau’s case, the non-use – of the Lacanian categories of jouissance and fantasy. The absence of these particular expressions of impossibility in Laclau’s work, along with his relatively formalist interpretation of the Real, reveals a deeper issue in his largely structurally based analysis; that of the need to go beyond the act of interpreting social structures, practices and institutions in order to achieve radical change. The role that jouissance plays within political analysis for taking such analysis beyond mere interpretation shall be the central focus of the following chapter.Laclau and Žižek share a common belief that language contains limit-points that are inherent to itself, establishing the social realm upon a negative ontology. Paradoxically though, this negative ontology is the very basis for the construction of universality. In its unmediated form, the negativity that is inherent to the social domain (through the effect of the Real) is unbearable for the subject. By means of the prospect of jouissance, however – the troubling pleasure to which we shall soon return – the subject is driven towards the intrinsic wholeness of universality. As a result, the universal becomes an impossible yet necessary object, exemplified in Lacan’s concept of objet a and Laclau’s notion of the empty signifier (both of which are paradoxically produced at the limit point of the discursive, yet offer the impossible prospect of the suturing of these limits). The impossibility of universality, combined with the jouissance involved in its construct, produces a necessary exclusion of some elements. These elements, both in the form of what is known as symptoms or as the concrete universal, are central to the psychoanalytic conception of universality.
Žižek, Hegel and LacanŽižek has redeveloped universality through his reading of Lacan and Hegel. Although it is widely accepted that Lacan is the main influence on Žižek’s thought, Žižek has also re-read Hegel through the process of après-coup, that is, the paradoxical formula by which advancements are gained by retrospectively interpreting the past in the terms of the future in order to ‘release its significance for the present’ (Kay, 2003, p.18). This has allowed Žižek the opportunity to re-establish what he regards as the common bond between Hegel and Lacan, their belief in the radical negativity which reigns at the heart of the social (p.17). Working with this negative ontology through the process of après-coup, Žižek has re-read Hegel via Lacan to make the former a philosopher of the Real (p.17). Likewise, Žižek has given a political edge to Lacan’s mostly apolitical thought. This political edge is achieved through the Hegelian dialectic, which Žižek has renewed in the name of dialectical materialism, which he describes as the struggle of opposites in the form of an irresolvable tension that characterises the universal (Žižek, 2006a, p.7).
The psychoanalytic definition of universality is of a different kind from that traditionally constructed in both modern and post-modern philosophy, in that it is based on a radically different articulation of the relationship between elements that Hegel suggested constitute the domain of universality – they being the universal, the particular and the universal exception (Kay, 2003, p.39). Modern and post-modern philosophy share a view that both social cultural plurality and particularity exist in relation to concrete institutions, such as the State and Discourse, respectively. Within psychoanalysis, alternatively, the opposed poles of plurality and particularity are related responses to an elemental, universal lack; the impossible Real that produces an exception which is constitutive of the universal itself (Daly, 1999a, p.75; Žižek, 1989, p.4).
For Žižek, this means that a universal can never be fully constituted in itself. This is seen in the role that the singular, which Žižek calls the exception, plays in the constitution of a universal horizon. Any form of identity has to form abstractly from the particular elements that make up the basic building blocks of a discursive structure. Discourses must exclude other particular elements to achieve this abstraction (Žižek, 1999, p.180). This exclusion thus becomes a condition of possibility of the universal, and vitally, evidence of the failure of the universal; the excluded particular of a given social formation bears witness to the very impossibility of the conception of universality by which that formation is ordered. This particular element, the singular exception, operates as an unsymbolisable remainder or trace that is generated in the process of producing a universal imaginary through the effect of the Real.
The excluded particular creates a short-circuit in the relationship between the universal and the particular. The excluded element becomes a universal exception, bypassing the particular through its singularity. The exception is singular, rather than particular, because it negates the universal horizon – an embodiment of the opposite of the universal – but at the same time exceeds that horizon because the universal imaginary requires the presence of this singularity: at the same time as it negates the universal, the constitutive role of the singular means that it exceeds the abstracted universal horizon. As this thesis will develop in more detail in subsequent chapters, it is this disavowed element of the universal – the exception – which offers a potential exit-point from the stabilising, functionalist-like cycles of change that routinely get presented as Change within popular discourses.
Zizek and Marx
Despite Žižek’s initial affinity with Laclau and Mouffe’s variant of post-Marxism, the influence of classical Marxism on Žižek’s work should not be underestimated. It is clear that Žižek has sought to become an orthodox Marxist as well as an orthodox Lacanian. There are those, such as Sean Homer (Homer, 2001), who believe that orthodox Lacanian and Marxist thought are “theoretically incommensurable intellectual systems” (p.7) and as such, obstacles to the kind of radical political economy envisaged by Žižek. Homer’s position, however, lacks an appreciation of the après-coup manner in which Žižek uses a theorist. By approaching a theorist in a retroactive manner, Žižek is able to reinterpret them in terms of his own thought and contemporary circumstances, rather than according to the letter of what the theorist had written. Thus, for Žižek, to be an orthodox Marxist is not to simply repeat Marx, but rather to re-read him après-coup and unleash the significance of his thought for contemporary analysis. Žižek uses Hegel in much the same manner; he is not trying to follow either Hegel or Marx to the letter but, rather, to rehabilitate Hegelian and Marxist thought for contemporary times. In this sense Žižek is post-Marxist; his adherence to Lacanian semiotics prevents him from taking on the more humanist of Marx’s concepts, such as ‘species being’ or ‘false consciousness’. More importantly, however, it allows Žižek to return the economy and class antagonism to the core of political analysis.
To summarise these points: Žižek brings together his conceptions of Marx, Lacan, Hegel, and his own thoughts on universality and the Real, into a critique of global capitalism. Global capitalismhas increasingly become his main political target. Žižek has become frustrated with the emphasis on postmodern particularism, as is expressed politically in the ‘new social movements’. For Žižek these movements represent an implicit acceptance of the horizons of global capital and are an example of a ‘rotational revolution’. In this same vein, this thesis contends that a truly radical movement needs to invoke the Real and its relationship with the universal, especially the universal exception. The Real is perhaps the concept of Lacanian psychoanalysis and any related political analysis, because it breaks down previous barriers of purely interpretative methods, entering into the realm of pleasure/jouissance to enable understanding of how a universal ideology grips the subject.
Modalities of the Real and of Jouissance
According to psychoanalyst Bruce Fink, the Real can be divided into two basic categories, the Real that exists ‘before the letter’ (R1) and the Real that persists ‘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 ‘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, a symbolic which cannot fully grasp what is beyond its limits. In reality, R1 exists only as an absence. This absence is, however, given a name and thus an existence; without this operation of naming it within the symbolic, R1 would only be felt as an absence. Through the process of naming, however, R1 is given an existence (albeit ‘only’ a symbolic one) within human experience (Fink, 1995, p.24-5).R1, however, is not purely a temporal conception in the sense of ‘coming before language’. R1 is not only what is before symbolisation, but also what has not yet been symbolised. Thus, the Real can be symbolised from one perspective but not from another (p.26). What may be openly accepted in one discourse, for example the radical unsustainability of capitalist production within eco-Marxist thought, may be impossible to symbolise within another, such as free-market capitalist ideology. While the unsustainability of capitalism production is Real from the latter perspective, it is symbolic within the former. Therefore the Real can be symbolically manipulated, but not within the terms amongst which the Real remains unsymbolisable. Rather, the effect of the Real can be forced upon the realm in which it remains the impossible. Therefore, while the Real is impossible, importantly for our argument on political change, it is also the impossible that happens. For those who doubt the political potential of Lacanian thought, the Real (in the form of R1) acts only as a limit to symbolisation, as an external limit which allows only for conservative politics (J. Butler, 2000, p.141). In contrast, Žižek argues that the Real cannot be reduced an a priori symbolic norm (Žižek, 2000b, p.309). In his view, the Real is not a pre-social element that opposes the symbolic, nor an effect of the social itself, but rather it is both the precondition for the establishment of reality and the exclusions that occur to/within reality itself (p.311).
Žižek himself has battled against the Real as an a priori. In the foreword to the 2nd edition of For They Know Not What They Do, Žižek states that in his previous book The Sublime Object of Ideology, he was guilty of a transcendental reading of the Lacanian Real in which the Real appears as an actually-existing condition of absence. To avoid this kind of reading, he introduces three separate modalities of the Real which map onto the triad of Lacanian registers (Real, imaginary, symbolic); the real Real, the imaginary Real and the symbolic Real. The real Real is the primordial lack or horrifying Thing. The imaginary Real is the manner in which an object comes to appear to be sublime, as in objet a. It is the symbolic Real, though, which is of most interest in relation to this thesis.
The symbolic Real is the Real as a consistent background to the symbolic, it is that which has hegemonised hegemony itself (Žižek, 2002, p.xii). Žižek uses this definition of the Real in his definition of global capital as that which sets the fundamental limits of all symbolisation. Therefore the symbolic Real has much in common with Fink’s R2 because the symbolic Real, in combination with other forms of the Real, introduces inconsistencies into the symbolic order. As an illustration, with capital as the symbolic Real, any discourse in apparent contradistinction with capital, such as ecologism, can only express itself up to a certain limit, that limit being established by capital. Beyond this point the discourse becomes marked with inconsistencies; we see this in the economic interventions of ecological thought, which while critiquing the fundamental premises of capitalism, such as the drive for profit, cannot bring itself to designate capital as the problem itself.
As a consequence, 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 simultaneously within and outside the symbolic. This is the case for R1 because it establishes the outer limits of symbolisation, but also for R2. R2 operates as the factor that distorts symbolisation from within; it is the disavowed ‘X’ that warps our knowledge 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. To rephrase the point, although the Real is disavowed, it is also the elemental pre-condition and support of reality in the sense that it constitutes its very limits and thus the conditions of possibility for the symbolic (Kay, 2003, p.168).
Whilst the Real operates with the symbolic realm as a lack, it is not only a negative condition. The Real also exists as a condition of excess. The excessive element of the Real comes through the positivisations that occur of the Real through subjects’ uses of fantasy. These positivisations underpin the functioning of the social; fantasy, desire and, most importantly, jouissance. Jouissance is a paradoxical state of suffering/enjoyment that lies ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ (Evans, 1996, p.92). This troubling pleasure is the substance recognised by psychoanalytic thought as the material substrata of social life and, as such, it is the only substance known to psychoanalysis (Braunstein, 2003, p.19). Jouissance is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, although it can operate in these modes, but it also goes beyond pleasure into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering. Jouissance operates in numerous modalities, each altering the manner in which it is expressed. Indeed, Braunstein cites twenty different modalities for the operation of jouissance, from the initial satisfaction of necessities in the pre-symbolic child (‘pure Jouissance’) to the jouissance of the symptom, to the failure of the symbolic order to provide the subject with access to pure Jouissance.Fink (1995, p.60), in a similar manner to both Braunstein and his own distinction between modalities of the Real, distinguishes between two orders of jouissance, J1 and J2. J1 refers to Jouissance ‘before the letter’. This Jouissance is the Real link of unity between the mother and the child, in this sense it is ‘pure’, unmediated Jouissance. J2 is jouissance ‘after the letter’, that which occurs once the subject enters language. Here Jouissance gives way to jouissance because of the mediating affect of language upon the subject of the signifier. The subject loses access to Jouissance, but is able to procure a second-order form of jouissance that compensates for that loss. This procurement occurs through the staging of fantasy (Fink, 1995, p.60). Compensatory jouissance revolves around the necessarily impossible attempts to regain the original unity of Jouissance (such as through universality) which are supported by fantasy. These attempts cannot succeed because the subject cannot return to a time before language, a time of J1, but this very impossibility is repressed in fantasy.
Conversely, Žižek contends that J1 itself is a fantasmatic creation. This form of jouissance does not really exist, it is only a fantasmatic construction produced because of the lack of jouissance within the symbolic order. Fantasy initiates the idea for the subject that there was once a time or space before lack. However, like the Real before-the-letter, J1 only exists because it is given a name in language. Žižek contends that this conception (of a lost, primal jouissance) ignores a paradox that is caused by the Real, that there is no enjoyment for the subject before their enmeshment in surplus-enjoyment. The fundamental illusion is that behind jouissance there is, or once was, an original Jouissance (Žižek, 1993, p.35-6). Therefore, Žižek suggests that social analysis should avoid any fixation on J1, as if surplus-enjoyment, J2 is somewhat secondary, as though there is first a primary Jouissance, then after the insertion of the signifier into the young infant there exists a remainder of jouissance. Conversely, the fantasmatic nature of both forms of jouissance means that neither should be dismissed conceptually; the operation of jouissance can only be understood through the relationship between the two orders. Rather, J2 can only operate through the prospect of J1. This prospect informs the production of J2, both in sense that the fantasmatic postulate of J1 gives rise to the drive for jouissance, but also produces the very impossibility of returning to Jouissance. The paradoxical nature of second-order jouissance is embodied in the form of an excessive surplus or remainder which imbues the symbolic. Interpreted in this manner, surplus enjoyment is also a creature of the super-ego (Kay, 2003, p.163).
The Super-Ego
Lacan’s definition of the super-ego differs from Freud’s original conception. Freud maintained that the super-ego helped to keep the id in check and maintain a balanced ego. In contrast, Lacan considered the super-ego to be not only the subject’s ‘moral’ or normative conscience but, more productively, an unconscious site of enjoyment/perversion. Thus, where Freud conceived of the unconscious as being a site that resists law, Lacan regards the unconscious, through the super-ego, to be the very place of compliance; one does not battle to follow the law, instead we enjoy submitting to norms through the surplus enjoyment that is supplied by the super-ego. Thus, for Lacan, the super-ego becomes an obscene supplement to the symbolic law, enabling the subject to conform.
The super-ego operates because in the process of becoming a social being, the subject makes a (forced) choice away from pure Jouissance and towards language. Although pure Jouissance is not attainable after subjectification, this impossibility is forgotten. The subject represses the initial negation, the impossibility of achieving fullness. It ‘forgets’ that it never had the thing in the first place. The super-ego plays an important role in maintaining the image that fullness is possible. It presses ‘guilt’ upon the subject when s/he experiences things going wrong for it and accounts for those events in terms of its failure to do what is required of it (that is, does not follow the symbolic law). However, every time the subject gives in to the demands of the super-ego and the social order (naturally) is not sutured, more guilt is produced. The more we submit, the more we need to submit. The surplus-enjoyment of the super-ego is very similar to the Marxist notion of surplus-value; the more you have the more you need.
It is through fantasy that the subject learns to control jouissance and the demands of the super-ego, thereby structuring its desire (Kay, 2003, p.163).Lacan located desire within a field which also incorporated need and demand. Upon entry into the social, the subject loses access to the level of biological need (e.g. hunger) because every need has to be articulated through the Other of the symbolic order. That which can be articulated (need) can be satisfied, but the unsymbolisable remnant – desire – cannot. Because of its articulation through the Other, need becomes a demand to the Other (Evans, 1996, p.37). Desire is that which is in demand more than need, the impossible quest for the mythical lost Jouissance (Stavrakakis, 2000, p.87). Desire operates as a metonymic chain, objects being presented as a series of substitutions for the constitutive lack, these objects being presented as an embodiment of a lost Jouissance (Žižek, 1999, p.228; Kay, 2003, p.160). Lacan also locates desire in relation to drive. Desire aims at an object whose possession is sought, ultimately the enigmatic objet a. When this object is obtained, desire does not subside, but is rather transferred to another object in a metonymic fashion. In contrast, drive does not aim at the object, but rather generates enjoyment from circulating around the object and precisely not achieving the goal (Evans, 1996, p.46). The object around which drive circulates is objet a. Objet a is a particularly seminal concept for Lacanian psychoanalysis. Objet a can be considered the site of fundamental lack, the void at which the subject remains perpetually riven. As such Lacan places it at the centre of the Borromean knot, as the point where all three registers (of Real, imaginary, and symbolic) meet. While objet a is primarily an imaginary concept –- it is constructed in fantasy as the object that will represents a return to Jouissance – it has connotations of the Real and is symbolically constituted through the signifier (Evans, 1996, p.124). As well as its triadic structure, objet a is also both the object-cause and the logic of desire. Objet a is able to function as this paradoxical object-cause because it is the remnant of the Real, of R1, that remains in the subject after the subject enters the symbolic order and is thereby an element of the Other, being the lack that persists on account of the inability of language to connect with material reality. Fantasy uses objet a in order to maintain the consistency of reality. 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 (Žižek, 1997, p.81; 2001a, p.149). This object is then retroactively posited as the cause of desire.
Žižek further elevates the concept of objet a in The Parallax View (Žižek, 2006a), such that it becomes ‘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. Objet a eludes the grasp of the symbolic, avoiding description, because it is produced by the subject in the formation of its own gaze. It is an indelible, material ‘stain’ within that gaze that signifies the constituting effect of the subject’s own inclusion in the reality they have constructed. 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 (Žižek, 1997, p.7). Fantasy, in the Lacanian sense, is not opposed to reality, but rather structures reality and protects the subject from the effect of the Real (Kay, 2003, p.163; Evans, 1996, p.60, Žižek, 1997, p.1).
Fantasy, Ideology and Universality
Fantasy has an intimate relationship with ideology. Ideology presents the social to the knowing subject as being a consistent entity. Fantasy also achieves this task by portraying the dislocations which threaten that consistency as antagonisms that are external to social life, and thus amenable to corrective action. For example, ideology and fantasy operate within capitalism by presenting market failures (evidence of the inconsistency of the capitalist discourse) as the fault of external factors, such as government intervention. In this manner capitalist ideology maintains its consistency. The consistency produced by ideology allows for the prospect of universality – that discourses like capital are ‘natural’ and ‘objective’. The issue of the universal brings together the concepts of jouissance, objet a, fantasy, ideology, desire, and the Real. These elements interact to produce the abstract universal, that is, the imaginary vista of a shared aspirational horizon through which political communities organise themselves. As such, the abstract universal is constructed in ideological fantasy. Moreover, it is supported, or rather motivated, by jouissance, particularly the jouissance which the subject obtains through the participating in the symbolic order, J2.
The subject obtains jouissance from abstract universal imaginaries because they appear to promise social fullness by suturing the lack in the Other, by eradicating its inconsistencies. The suture occurs through the idea that the fully inclusive, consensual Society is not impossible; such as the dream of Third Way politics, that a middle approach is available that gives the benefits of economic growth whilst protecting social justice. Abstract universal imaginaries are at the heart of politics, although, as shall be developed in Chapter 3, they cannot produce radical change but, rather, only minor alterations to prevailing social arrangements. These minor changes pivot around a fundamental limit point within the discursive structures that support those arrangements (that is, the Real). Illustrating local, political expressions of these universalising imaginaries, the New Zealand National Party, in their ‘Vision for New Zealand’ state, ‘The National Party seeks a safe, prosperous and successful New Zealand that creates opportunities for all New Zealanders to reach their personal goals and dreams’ (NationalParty, 2006). Similarly the vision statement of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand states ‘In our Vision, Aotearoa New Zealand is a place where people respect each other and the natural world we share. It is healthy, peaceful and richly diverse’ (GreenParty, 2006) Both these visions exemplify wonderfully the substance and tone of the abstract universal.The abstract universal, however, can never be fully universal because it is always an abstraction of a particular object, typically, a political community. This particularistic object is unable to construct itself as universal because of the lack inherent in its constitution. The lack is occluded by fantasy, however, and the abstract universal is able to organise subjects’ experiences of jouissance. Despite this, the abstract universal remains split between two elements – one negative, the other a positivisation – that act as an embodiment of the effect of the Real: the nodal point and the universal exception. The nodal point is a positivisation of the Real, occurring as it does at a point where the abstract universal fails. As such, the nodal point is the component around which particular elements are organised and condensed in order to suture the universal. As an example, the signifier ‘New Zealander’ provides a nodal point for the structuring of New Zealand identity. At a point where national identity might break down because of a conflict between particular elements, such as Maori and Pakeha, ‘New Zealander’ is able to condense these particular elements and suture the lack inherent in a political community like New Zealand. This nodal point corresponds to the objet a, and also resonates with Ernesto Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier, which will be returned to in greater detail in chapter 3.Of more political significance than the condensing effect of the nodal point, for Žižek, is the existence of an exception to that universal, that which Laclau terms the constitutive outside. This exception is conceptualised in two forms, the concrete universal and the symptom. The concrete universal is a key site for any political formation seeking to evoke a radical dislocation. Here, dislocation refers to failures within the discursive structures by which political communities organise that are caused by encounters with events and conditions that couldn’t be envisaged within the terms of those structures (the Real, R2). Dislocation produces both a sense of lack and the desire to fill that lack (Stavrakakis, 1999, p.68). In this sense, dislocation has both a destructive and constructive influence on the social (Laclau, 1990, p.39).
Concrete Universality and the Symptom
The concrete universal must be excluded in order for the abstract universal to appear coherent. The ability of the concrete universal to subvert that exclusion and become a source of political change turns upon its ability to operate as an affect of the Real. That is, the concrete universal exists outside of the terms of the dominant universal horizon. From the perspective of this imaginary, the concrete universal is the impossible, it is Real. As an illustration, one element of the abstract universal imaginary of western capital could be considered that the ‘deserved’ wealth of those members at the upper echelons of society occurs because democratic capitalist societies are inherently meritocratic. However, what must be excluded from this formulation is the poverty of the Third World, the existence of which is required in order for this wealth to be maintained. Without this exclusion, the abstract universal would not be able to be cohesively formed. The excluded element, the concrete universal, constitutes the Truth of the abstract universal in that its exclusion is a necessary one. In order for the concrete universal to exert political pressure upon the abstract universal, it must be represented within that same universal, undermining its coherence. The form which it takes in doing so is as the symptom. The symptom ‘reveals the truth’ of the abstract universal within the very terms by which the abstract universal is constituted. The symptom does so by embodying the presence of the Real imposed by the concrete universal, by constituting it as a force that cannot be fully domesticated by the abstract universal.
In order for the system to survive the existence within itself of the symptom, to functionally operate, the symptom must be domesticated. This domestication predominately occurs by the inclusion of the symptom within the ideological fantasy of the abstract universal. Ideological fantasy, the symbolic component of the imaginary, has the role of presenting the symbolic to subjects as full and coherent. By doing so, ideological fantasy offers the prospect of Jouissance. The dislocating effect of the symptom is pacified in ideological fantasy by being interpreted as an external element that has to be fixed e.g. a market failure caused by a rise in the minimum wage, rather than a constitutive failure that goes to the core of capitalism. Alternatively, the symptom might be portrayed as an external antagonism that is preventing the full expression of society e.g. solo mothers exploiting the benefit system, causing taxes to rise.
Hence the strong relationship between the symptom and objet a; the symptom often stands in as that which needs to be eliminated to allow the full expression of society. The removal of the symptom becomes an object of desire. Additionally, these methods of portraying the disruptive -effect of the symptom produce jouissance in that they keep a distance between the abstract universal horizon and the very impossibility of its construction. Thus, while ideological fantasy conceals the radical negativity of the social, preventing the subject from the experiences of anxiety, trauma and dislocation which come from naked exposure to the Real, the symptom also gives rise to the inherent negativity that exists as an excess to the universal.
The relationship between the symptom, ideological fantasy, objet a and concrete universality will be elaborated upon further in chapters 4 and 5, particularly the jouissance that is generated by the symptom. Indeed, the symptom, the concrete universal, and the various measures used to domesticate these subversive forces, constitute the basis of the methodological position and political approach at the heart of this thesis. The key to this methodological position, both in the sense of domesticating the symptom and exploiting it as a disruptive factor, is the affective force of jouissance inherent in both modalities of the universal. That is, one cannot simply examine the social only as the symbolic realm, but rather enter into analysis of both the lack and excesses produced by the Real. The following chapter deals with the limits of the interpretive approach, as is characterised by the work of Ernesto Laclau. That discussion leads into a further elaboration of the roles that universality and jouissance play in the construction of social transformation, and of their reconstitution of the notion of dialectical materialism.
This chapter introduces and reviews the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis in relation to the argumentation developed in this thesis. These concepts do not reflect the full range of psychoanalytic terms, nor their ‘true’ meaning. Although it is important to clarify the manner in which a concept will be used, the uneven history and internally ruptured nature of psychoanalysis is such that definite definitions are elusive. Instead, the terms will be defined in the manner they will be used for the task of political analysis. The most popularised basis for such analysis is Slavoj Žižek’s appropriation of Lacanian psychoanalysis, which evaluates the possibilities for radical socio-political change, specifically in relation to the economy. Particularly salient for this approach are the concepts of the Real, jouissance, desire, fantasy, objet a and universality, especially the category of the universal he calls ‘the universal exception’. Before entering into a discussion of these concepts, however, it is useful to examine the predominant influences on Žižek’s work, Lacan, Hegel, Laclau and Marx, in order to establish the context in which he operates.Žižek’s main influence has been Jacques Lacan; above all, theoretically Žižek is a Lacanian, although Žižek’s use of Lacan is orientated for political rather than clinical analysis. Lacan himself was not political; he was very sceptical about the prospect of revolutionary change, particularly radical change of the sort examined in this thesis. Lacan considered there to be two different meanings of the term ‘revolution’. The first mode of revolution is the overthrow of a government or social order, redirecting evolution, so to speak. It was the second, conservative meaning of revolution, however, on which Lacan placed more emphasis. Here, revolution is taken to mean a rotation around a single central axis (Ciaccia, 2005). This differentiation is seminal for understanding the psychoanalytic conception of social and political change. The latter definition of revolution suggests that while there may be an appearance of movement and some plurality of positions, these are simply responses to the same fundamental and impossible Real. Thus to break out of the conservative conception of revolution and into true political revolution and radical social change, one has to enter into the realm of this fundamental blockage, the Real. This thesis supports Žižek’s view that the concept of the Real, articulated through Žižek’s concept of universality, gives substantial leverage to a psychoanalytic political approach. Furthermore, this approach allows for the possibility of revolutionary political change.The Real thus emerges as a core psychoanalytic concept for all analyses of political change or stability. The Real, however, cannot be conceptualised outside of the other registers of Lacanian psychoanalysis; the symbolic – the place of the Other that is structured through the production of signifiers – and the imaginary, that is, the illusionary register of wholeness that emerges for the subject via their identification with the arena of images. Thus the Real is not an entity in itself, but rather a fundamental lack, an effect without a cause that can be observed only through the presence gaps within, of absence, in the symbolic and the imaginary orders. As the limit to signification, the effects of the Real provide the core analytical emphasis for psychoanalysis, through the negative ontology established by the limitations of language (through the effect of the Real upon the symbolic and the imaginary), through the positivisations of this limit in fantasy (which enables the social realm to appear consistent), and through jouissance (for Lacan, the only real substance that exists within social life).The most important consideration in terms of socio-political change, however, is the relationship between the Real and Žižek’s rehabilitated conception of universality. Railing against the increasing focus on particularism within postmodern thought, Žižek has sought to rehabilitate the concept of universality. This rehabilitation has occurred through a re-reading of the work of Jacques Lacan, Karl Marx and Georg Hegel, as well as a dialogue with post-Marxist discourse theorist, Ernesto Laclau. The universal, in its abstract form, is both impossible, in that it can never be fully constituted, and necessary, due to the need to avoid the naked experience of anxiety that is provoked by encounters with the Real. It is this dynamic contradiction, which produces an exception to the universal within the universal – that is, the element which is both part of the universal, yet subverts its horizon – which drives the dialectic process and out of which any possibility for political change will emerge.
The dynamic relationship between the universal and its exception informs the key theoretical hypothesis of this thesis; socio-political change that is capable of generating more than a refashioning of (a simple rotation around) existing alternatives occurs through the dynamic dialectic interactions of the universal (a construction of both the symbolic and the imaginary) and the effect of the Real, embodied by excluded elements of that universal. How the relationship that exists between the universal, the particular, and the universal exception might best be interpreted has been a key point of debate between Žižek and Laclau. Žižek’s interchange with Laclau has been vitally important in his reformulation of a theory of the universal. As a consequence, discussion of the influences upon Žižek will begin with Laclau.
Žižek and Laclau
Laclau and Žižek have very similar theoretical orientations, combining the insights of psychoanalysis, Marxism and post-structuralism, although both disavow the continued influence of the latter (Žižek & Daly, 2004, p.46). Laclau and Žižek have been central in generating a form of political analysis that draws upon Lacanian psychoanalysis. That said, as we shall soon observe, these approaches have notable differences, mainly around how the Real is to be conceptualised. Laclau and Žižek each agree on the fundamental importance of the radically negative character of social life, exemplified in the core maxim of Laclau’s seminal text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: ‘society does not exist’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). This formulation, which correlates with the Lacanian ideas that ‘the big Other doesn’t exist’ and that ‘there is no sexual relation’, has led both Laclau and Žižek to reject the prospect of positive utopian politics.
Despite this initial similarity in political positions and their shared theoretical allegiances, Laclau and Žižek now inhabit quite different positions on both counts. As such, a detailed analysis of the divergences between Laclau and Žižek is more than warranted to examine the political possibilities available from psychoanalytic theory. Of particular interest is the use – or in Laclau’s case, the non-use – of the Lacanian categories of jouissance and fantasy. The absence of these particular expressions of impossibility in Laclau’s work, along with his relatively formalist interpretation of the Real, reveals a deeper issue in his largely structurally based analysis; that of the need to go beyond the act of interpreting social structures, practices and institutions in order to achieve radical change. The role that jouissance plays within political analysis for taking such analysis beyond mere interpretation shall be the central focus of the following chapter.Laclau and Žižek share a common belief that language contains limit-points that are inherent to itself, establishing the social realm upon a negative ontology. Paradoxically though, this negative ontology is the very basis for the construction of universality. In its unmediated form, the negativity that is inherent to the social domain (through the effect of the Real) is unbearable for the subject. By means of the prospect of jouissance, however – the troubling pleasure to which we shall soon return – the subject is driven towards the intrinsic wholeness of universality. As a result, the universal becomes an impossible yet necessary object, exemplified in Lacan’s concept of objet a and Laclau’s notion of the empty signifier (both of which are paradoxically produced at the limit point of the discursive, yet offer the impossible prospect of the suturing of these limits). The impossibility of universality, combined with the jouissance involved in its construct, produces a necessary exclusion of some elements. These elements, both in the form of what is known as symptoms or as the concrete universal, are central to the psychoanalytic conception of universality.
Žižek, Hegel and LacanŽižek has redeveloped universality through his reading of Lacan and Hegel. Although it is widely accepted that Lacan is the main influence on Žižek’s thought, Žižek has also re-read Hegel through the process of après-coup, that is, the paradoxical formula by which advancements are gained by retrospectively interpreting the past in the terms of the future in order to ‘release its significance for the present’ (Kay, 2003, p.18). This has allowed Žižek the opportunity to re-establish what he regards as the common bond between Hegel and Lacan, their belief in the radical negativity which reigns at the heart of the social (p.17). Working with this negative ontology through the process of après-coup, Žižek has re-read Hegel via Lacan to make the former a philosopher of the Real (p.17). Likewise, Žižek has given a political edge to Lacan’s mostly apolitical thought. This political edge is achieved through the Hegelian dialectic, which Žižek has renewed in the name of dialectical materialism, which he describes as the struggle of opposites in the form of an irresolvable tension that characterises the universal (Žižek, 2006a, p.7).
The psychoanalytic definition of universality is of a different kind from that traditionally constructed in both modern and post-modern philosophy, in that it is based on a radically different articulation of the relationship between elements that Hegel suggested constitute the domain of universality – they being the universal, the particular and the universal exception (Kay, 2003, p.39). Modern and post-modern philosophy share a view that both social cultural plurality and particularity exist in relation to concrete institutions, such as the State and Discourse, respectively. Within psychoanalysis, alternatively, the opposed poles of plurality and particularity are related responses to an elemental, universal lack; the impossible Real that produces an exception which is constitutive of the universal itself (Daly, 1999a, p.75; Žižek, 1989, p.4).
For Žižek, this means that a universal can never be fully constituted in itself. This is seen in the role that the singular, which Žižek calls the exception, plays in the constitution of a universal horizon. Any form of identity has to form abstractly from the particular elements that make up the basic building blocks of a discursive structure. Discourses must exclude other particular elements to achieve this abstraction (Žižek, 1999, p.180). This exclusion thus becomes a condition of possibility of the universal, and vitally, evidence of the failure of the universal; the excluded particular of a given social formation bears witness to the very impossibility of the conception of universality by which that formation is ordered. This particular element, the singular exception, operates as an unsymbolisable remainder or trace that is generated in the process of producing a universal imaginary through the effect of the Real.
The excluded particular creates a short-circuit in the relationship between the universal and the particular. The excluded element becomes a universal exception, bypassing the particular through its singularity. The exception is singular, rather than particular, because it negates the universal horizon – an embodiment of the opposite of the universal – but at the same time exceeds that horizon because the universal imaginary requires the presence of this singularity: at the same time as it negates the universal, the constitutive role of the singular means that it exceeds the abstracted universal horizon. As this thesis will develop in more detail in subsequent chapters, it is this disavowed element of the universal – the exception – which offers a potential exit-point from the stabilising, functionalist-like cycles of change that routinely get presented as Change within popular discourses.
Zizek and Marx
Despite Žižek’s initial affinity with Laclau and Mouffe’s variant of post-Marxism, the influence of classical Marxism on Žižek’s work should not be underestimated. It is clear that Žižek has sought to become an orthodox Marxist as well as an orthodox Lacanian. There are those, such as Sean Homer (Homer, 2001), who believe that orthodox Lacanian and Marxist thought are “theoretically incommensurable intellectual systems” (p.7) and as such, obstacles to the kind of radical political economy envisaged by Žižek. Homer’s position, however, lacks an appreciation of the après-coup manner in which Žižek uses a theorist. By approaching a theorist in a retroactive manner, Žižek is able to reinterpret them in terms of his own thought and contemporary circumstances, rather than according to the letter of what the theorist had written. Thus, for Žižek, to be an orthodox Marxist is not to simply repeat Marx, but rather to re-read him après-coup and unleash the significance of his thought for contemporary analysis. Žižek uses Hegel in much the same manner; he is not trying to follow either Hegel or Marx to the letter but, rather, to rehabilitate Hegelian and Marxist thought for contemporary times. In this sense Žižek is post-Marxist; his adherence to Lacanian semiotics prevents him from taking on the more humanist of Marx’s concepts, such as ‘species being’ or ‘false consciousness’. More importantly, however, it allows Žižek to return the economy and class antagonism to the core of political analysis.
To summarise these points: Žižek brings together his conceptions of Marx, Lacan, Hegel, and his own thoughts on universality and the Real, into a critique of global capitalism. Global capitalismhas increasingly become his main political target. Žižek has become frustrated with the emphasis on postmodern particularism, as is expressed politically in the ‘new social movements’. For Žižek these movements represent an implicit acceptance of the horizons of global capital and are an example of a ‘rotational revolution’. In this same vein, this thesis contends that a truly radical movement needs to invoke the Real and its relationship with the universal, especially the universal exception. The Real is perhaps the concept of Lacanian psychoanalysis and any related political analysis, because it breaks down previous barriers of purely interpretative methods, entering into the realm of pleasure/jouissance to enable understanding of how a universal ideology grips the subject.
Modalities of the Real and of Jouissance
According to psychoanalyst Bruce Fink, the Real can be divided into two basic categories, the Real that exists ‘before the letter’ (R1) and the Real that persists ‘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 ‘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, a symbolic which cannot fully grasp what is beyond its limits. In reality, R1 exists only as an absence. This absence is, however, given a name and thus an existence; without this operation of naming it within the symbolic, R1 would only be felt as an absence. Through the process of naming, however, R1 is given an existence (albeit ‘only’ a symbolic one) within human experience (Fink, 1995, p.24-5).R1, however, is not purely a temporal conception in the sense of ‘coming before language’. R1 is not only what is before symbolisation, but also what has not yet been symbolised. Thus, the Real can be symbolised from one perspective but not from another (p.26). What may be openly accepted in one discourse, for example the radical unsustainability of capitalist production within eco-Marxist thought, may be impossible to symbolise within another, such as free-market capitalist ideology. While the unsustainability of capitalism production is Real from the latter perspective, it is symbolic within the former. Therefore the Real can be symbolically manipulated, but not within the terms amongst which the Real remains unsymbolisable. Rather, the effect of the Real can be forced upon the realm in which it remains the impossible. Therefore, while the Real is impossible, importantly for our argument on political change, it is also the impossible that happens. For those who doubt the political potential of Lacanian thought, the Real (in the form of R1) acts only as a limit to symbolisation, as an external limit which allows only for conservative politics (J. Butler, 2000, p.141). In contrast, Žižek argues that the Real cannot be reduced an a priori symbolic norm (Žižek, 2000b, p.309). In his view, the Real is not a pre-social element that opposes the symbolic, nor an effect of the social itself, but rather it is both the precondition for the establishment of reality and the exclusions that occur to/within reality itself (p.311).
Žižek himself has battled against the Real as an a priori. In the foreword to the 2nd edition of For They Know Not What They Do, Žižek states that in his previous book The Sublime Object of Ideology, he was guilty of a transcendental reading of the Lacanian Real in which the Real appears as an actually-existing condition of absence. To avoid this kind of reading, he introduces three separate modalities of the Real which map onto the triad of Lacanian registers (Real, imaginary, symbolic); the real Real, the imaginary Real and the symbolic Real. The real Real is the primordial lack or horrifying Thing. The imaginary Real is the manner in which an object comes to appear to be sublime, as in objet a. It is the symbolic Real, though, which is of most interest in relation to this thesis.
The symbolic Real is the Real as a consistent background to the symbolic, it is that which has hegemonised hegemony itself (Žižek, 2002, p.xii). Žižek uses this definition of the Real in his definition of global capital as that which sets the fundamental limits of all symbolisation. Therefore the symbolic Real has much in common with Fink’s R2 because the symbolic Real, in combination with other forms of the Real, introduces inconsistencies into the symbolic order. As an illustration, with capital as the symbolic Real, any discourse in apparent contradistinction with capital, such as ecologism, can only express itself up to a certain limit, that limit being established by capital. Beyond this point the discourse becomes marked with inconsistencies; we see this in the economic interventions of ecological thought, which while critiquing the fundamental premises of capitalism, such as the drive for profit, cannot bring itself to designate capital as the problem itself.
As a consequence, 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 simultaneously within and outside the symbolic. This is the case for R1 because it establishes the outer limits of symbolisation, but also for R2. R2 operates as the factor that distorts symbolisation from within; it is the disavowed ‘X’ that warps our knowledge 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. To rephrase the point, although the Real is disavowed, it is also the elemental pre-condition and support of reality in the sense that it constitutes its very limits and thus the conditions of possibility for the symbolic (Kay, 2003, p.168).
Whilst the Real operates with the symbolic realm as a lack, it is not only a negative condition. The Real also exists as a condition of excess. The excessive element of the Real comes through the positivisations that occur of the Real through subjects’ uses of fantasy. These positivisations underpin the functioning of the social; fantasy, desire and, most importantly, jouissance. Jouissance is a paradoxical state of suffering/enjoyment that lies ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ (Evans, 1996, p.92). This troubling pleasure is the substance recognised by psychoanalytic thought as the material substrata of social life and, as such, it is the only substance known to psychoanalysis (Braunstein, 2003, p.19). Jouissance is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, although it can operate in these modes, but it also goes beyond pleasure into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering. Jouissance operates in numerous modalities, each altering the manner in which it is expressed. Indeed, Braunstein cites twenty different modalities for the operation of jouissance, from the initial satisfaction of necessities in the pre-symbolic child (‘pure Jouissance’) to the jouissance of the symptom, to the failure of the symbolic order to provide the subject with access to pure Jouissance.Fink (1995, p.60), in a similar manner to both Braunstein and his own distinction between modalities of the Real, distinguishes between two orders of jouissance, J1 and J2. J1 refers to Jouissance ‘before the letter’. This Jouissance is the Real link of unity between the mother and the child, in this sense it is ‘pure’, unmediated Jouissance. J2 is jouissance ‘after the letter’, that which occurs once the subject enters language. Here Jouissance gives way to jouissance because of the mediating affect of language upon the subject of the signifier. The subject loses access to Jouissance, but is able to procure a second-order form of jouissance that compensates for that loss. This procurement occurs through the staging of fantasy (Fink, 1995, p.60). Compensatory jouissance revolves around the necessarily impossible attempts to regain the original unity of Jouissance (such as through universality) which are supported by fantasy. These attempts cannot succeed because the subject cannot return to a time before language, a time of J1, but this very impossibility is repressed in fantasy.
Conversely, Žižek contends that J1 itself is a fantasmatic creation. This form of jouissance does not really exist, it is only a fantasmatic construction produced because of the lack of jouissance within the symbolic order. Fantasy initiates the idea for the subject that there was once a time or space before lack. However, like the Real before-the-letter, J1 only exists because it is given a name in language. Žižek contends that this conception (of a lost, primal jouissance) ignores a paradox that is caused by the Real, that there is no enjoyment for the subject before their enmeshment in surplus-enjoyment. The fundamental illusion is that behind jouissance there is, or once was, an original Jouissance (Žižek, 1993, p.35-6). Therefore, Žižek suggests that social analysis should avoid any fixation on J1, as if surplus-enjoyment, J2 is somewhat secondary, as though there is first a primary Jouissance, then after the insertion of the signifier into the young infant there exists a remainder of jouissance. Conversely, the fantasmatic nature of both forms of jouissance means that neither should be dismissed conceptually; the operation of jouissance can only be understood through the relationship between the two orders. Rather, J2 can only operate through the prospect of J1. This prospect informs the production of J2, both in sense that the fantasmatic postulate of J1 gives rise to the drive for jouissance, but also produces the very impossibility of returning to Jouissance. The paradoxical nature of second-order jouissance is embodied in the form of an excessive surplus or remainder which imbues the symbolic. Interpreted in this manner, surplus enjoyment is also a creature of the super-ego (Kay, 2003, p.163).
The Super-Ego
Lacan’s definition of the super-ego differs from Freud’s original conception. Freud maintained that the super-ego helped to keep the id in check and maintain a balanced ego. In contrast, Lacan considered the super-ego to be not only the subject’s ‘moral’ or normative conscience but, more productively, an unconscious site of enjoyment/perversion. Thus, where Freud conceived of the unconscious as being a site that resists law, Lacan regards the unconscious, through the super-ego, to be the very place of compliance; one does not battle to follow the law, instead we enjoy submitting to norms through the surplus enjoyment that is supplied by the super-ego. Thus, for Lacan, the super-ego becomes an obscene supplement to the symbolic law, enabling the subject to conform.
The super-ego operates because in the process of becoming a social being, the subject makes a (forced) choice away from pure Jouissance and towards language. Although pure Jouissance is not attainable after subjectification, this impossibility is forgotten. The subject represses the initial negation, the impossibility of achieving fullness. It ‘forgets’ that it never had the thing in the first place. The super-ego plays an important role in maintaining the image that fullness is possible. It presses ‘guilt’ upon the subject when s/he experiences things going wrong for it and accounts for those events in terms of its failure to do what is required of it (that is, does not follow the symbolic law). However, every time the subject gives in to the demands of the super-ego and the social order (naturally) is not sutured, more guilt is produced. The more we submit, the more we need to submit. The surplus-enjoyment of the super-ego is very similar to the Marxist notion of surplus-value; the more you have the more you need.
It is through fantasy that the subject learns to control jouissance and the demands of the super-ego, thereby structuring its desire (Kay, 2003, p.163).Lacan located desire within a field which also incorporated need and demand. Upon entry into the social, the subject loses access to the level of biological need (e.g. hunger) because every need has to be articulated through the Other of the symbolic order. That which can be articulated (need) can be satisfied, but the unsymbolisable remnant – desire – cannot. Because of its articulation through the Other, need becomes a demand to the Other (Evans, 1996, p.37). Desire is that which is in demand more than need, the impossible quest for the mythical lost Jouissance (Stavrakakis, 2000, p.87). Desire operates as a metonymic chain, objects being presented as a series of substitutions for the constitutive lack, these objects being presented as an embodiment of a lost Jouissance (Žižek, 1999, p.228; Kay, 2003, p.160). Lacan also locates desire in relation to drive. Desire aims at an object whose possession is sought, ultimately the enigmatic objet a. When this object is obtained, desire does not subside, but is rather transferred to another object in a metonymic fashion. In contrast, drive does not aim at the object, but rather generates enjoyment from circulating around the object and precisely not achieving the goal (Evans, 1996, p.46). The object around which drive circulates is objet a. Objet a is a particularly seminal concept for Lacanian psychoanalysis. Objet a can be considered the site of fundamental lack, the void at which the subject remains perpetually riven. As such Lacan places it at the centre of the Borromean knot, as the point where all three registers (of Real, imaginary, and symbolic) meet. While objet a is primarily an imaginary concept –- it is constructed in fantasy as the object that will represents a return to Jouissance – it has connotations of the Real and is symbolically constituted through the signifier (Evans, 1996, p.124). As well as its triadic structure, objet a is also both the object-cause and the logic of desire. Objet a is able to function as this paradoxical object-cause because it is the remnant of the Real, of R1, that remains in the subject after the subject enters the symbolic order and is thereby an element of the Other, being the lack that persists on account of the inability of language to connect with material reality. Fantasy uses objet a in order to maintain the consistency of reality. 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 (Žižek, 1997, p.81; 2001a, p.149). This object is then retroactively posited as the cause of desire.
Žižek further elevates the concept of objet a in The Parallax View (Žižek, 2006a), such that it becomes ‘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. Objet a eludes the grasp of the symbolic, avoiding description, because it is produced by the subject in the formation of its own gaze. It is an indelible, material ‘stain’ within that gaze that signifies the constituting effect of the subject’s own inclusion in the reality they have constructed. 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 (Žižek, 1997, p.7). Fantasy, in the Lacanian sense, is not opposed to reality, but rather structures reality and protects the subject from the effect of the Real (Kay, 2003, p.163; Evans, 1996, p.60, Žižek, 1997, p.1).
Fantasy, Ideology and Universality
Fantasy has an intimate relationship with ideology. Ideology presents the social to the knowing subject as being a consistent entity. Fantasy also achieves this task by portraying the dislocations which threaten that consistency as antagonisms that are external to social life, and thus amenable to corrective action. For example, ideology and fantasy operate within capitalism by presenting market failures (evidence of the inconsistency of the capitalist discourse) as the fault of external factors, such as government intervention. In this manner capitalist ideology maintains its consistency. The consistency produced by ideology allows for the prospect of universality – that discourses like capital are ‘natural’ and ‘objective’. The issue of the universal brings together the concepts of jouissance, objet a, fantasy, ideology, desire, and the Real. These elements interact to produce the abstract universal, that is, the imaginary vista of a shared aspirational horizon through which political communities organise themselves. As such, the abstract universal is constructed in ideological fantasy. Moreover, it is supported, or rather motivated, by jouissance, particularly the jouissance which the subject obtains through the participating in the symbolic order, J2.
The subject obtains jouissance from abstract universal imaginaries because they appear to promise social fullness by suturing the lack in the Other, by eradicating its inconsistencies. The suture occurs through the idea that the fully inclusive, consensual Society is not impossible; such as the dream of Third Way politics, that a middle approach is available that gives the benefits of economic growth whilst protecting social justice. Abstract universal imaginaries are at the heart of politics, although, as shall be developed in Chapter 3, they cannot produce radical change but, rather, only minor alterations to prevailing social arrangements. These minor changes pivot around a fundamental limit point within the discursive structures that support those arrangements (that is, the Real). Illustrating local, political expressions of these universalising imaginaries, the New Zealand National Party, in their ‘Vision for New Zealand’ state, ‘The National Party seeks a safe, prosperous and successful New Zealand that creates opportunities for all New Zealanders to reach their personal goals and dreams’ (NationalParty, 2006). Similarly the vision statement of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand states ‘In our Vision, Aotearoa New Zealand is a place where people respect each other and the natural world we share. It is healthy, peaceful and richly diverse’ (GreenParty, 2006) Both these visions exemplify wonderfully the substance and tone of the abstract universal.The abstract universal, however, can never be fully universal because it is always an abstraction of a particular object, typically, a political community. This particularistic object is unable to construct itself as universal because of the lack inherent in its constitution. The lack is occluded by fantasy, however, and the abstract universal is able to organise subjects’ experiences of jouissance. Despite this, the abstract universal remains split between two elements – one negative, the other a positivisation – that act as an embodiment of the effect of the Real: the nodal point and the universal exception. The nodal point is a positivisation of the Real, occurring as it does at a point where the abstract universal fails. As such, the nodal point is the component around which particular elements are organised and condensed in order to suture the universal. As an example, the signifier ‘New Zealander’ provides a nodal point for the structuring of New Zealand identity. At a point where national identity might break down because of a conflict between particular elements, such as Maori and Pakeha, ‘New Zealander’ is able to condense these particular elements and suture the lack inherent in a political community like New Zealand. This nodal point corresponds to the objet a, and also resonates with Ernesto Laclau’s concept of the empty signifier, which will be returned to in greater detail in chapter 3.Of more political significance than the condensing effect of the nodal point, for Žižek, is the existence of an exception to that universal, that which Laclau terms the constitutive outside. This exception is conceptualised in two forms, the concrete universal and the symptom. The concrete universal is a key site for any political formation seeking to evoke a radical dislocation. Here, dislocation refers to failures within the discursive structures by which political communities organise that are caused by encounters with events and conditions that couldn’t be envisaged within the terms of those structures (the Real, R2). Dislocation produces both a sense of lack and the desire to fill that lack (Stavrakakis, 1999, p.68). In this sense, dislocation has both a destructive and constructive influence on the social (Laclau, 1990, p.39).
Concrete Universality and the Symptom
The concrete universal must be excluded in order for the abstract universal to appear coherent. The ability of the concrete universal to subvert that exclusion and become a source of political change turns upon its ability to operate as an affect of the Real. That is, the concrete universal exists outside of the terms of the dominant universal horizon. From the perspective of this imaginary, the concrete universal is the impossible, it is Real. As an illustration, one element of the abstract universal imaginary of western capital could be considered that the ‘deserved’ wealth of those members at the upper echelons of society occurs because democratic capitalist societies are inherently meritocratic. However, what must be excluded from this formulation is the poverty of the Third World, the existence of which is required in order for this wealth to be maintained. Without this exclusion, the abstract universal would not be able to be cohesively formed. The excluded element, the concrete universal, constitutes the Truth of the abstract universal in that its exclusion is a necessary one. In order for the concrete universal to exert political pressure upon the abstract universal, it must be represented within that same universal, undermining its coherence. The form which it takes in doing so is as the symptom. The symptom ‘reveals the truth’ of the abstract universal within the very terms by which the abstract universal is constituted. The symptom does so by embodying the presence of the Real imposed by the concrete universal, by constituting it as a force that cannot be fully domesticated by the abstract universal.
In order for the system to survive the existence within itself of the symptom, to functionally operate, the symptom must be domesticated. This domestication predominately occurs by the inclusion of the symptom within the ideological fantasy of the abstract universal. Ideological fantasy, the symbolic component of the imaginary, has the role of presenting the symbolic to subjects as full and coherent. By doing so, ideological fantasy offers the prospect of Jouissance. The dislocating effect of the symptom is pacified in ideological fantasy by being interpreted as an external element that has to be fixed e.g. a market failure caused by a rise in the minimum wage, rather than a constitutive failure that goes to the core of capitalism. Alternatively, the symptom might be portrayed as an external antagonism that is preventing the full expression of society e.g. solo mothers exploiting the benefit system, causing taxes to rise.
Hence the strong relationship between the symptom and objet a; the symptom often stands in as that which needs to be eliminated to allow the full expression of society. The removal of the symptom becomes an object of desire. Additionally, these methods of portraying the disruptive -effect of the symptom produce jouissance in that they keep a distance between the abstract universal horizon and the very impossibility of its construction. Thus, while ideological fantasy conceals the radical negativity of the social, preventing the subject from the experiences of anxiety, trauma and dislocation which come from naked exposure to the Real, the symptom also gives rise to the inherent negativity that exists as an excess to the universal.
The relationship between the symptom, ideological fantasy, objet a and concrete universality will be elaborated upon further in chapters 4 and 5, particularly the jouissance that is generated by the symptom. Indeed, the symptom, the concrete universal, and the various measures used to domesticate these subversive forces, constitute the basis of the methodological position and political approach at the heart of this thesis. The key to this methodological position, both in the sense of domesticating the symptom and exploiting it as a disruptive factor, is the affective force of jouissance inherent in both modalities of the universal. That is, one cannot simply examine the social only as the symbolic realm, but rather enter into analysis of both the lack and excesses produced by the Real. The following chapter deals with the limits of the interpretive approach, as is characterised by the work of Ernesto Laclau. That discussion leads into a further elaboration of the roles that universality and jouissance play in the construction of social transformation, and of their reconstitution of the notion of dialectical materialism.
Introduction
Lacanian psychoanalysis has a tense relationship with political philosophy. The Lacanian world of desire, fantasy, jouissance, and the Real[1] can appear quite divorced from contemporary politics. Indeed, Jacques Lacan himself was skeptical about the relationship between psychoanalysis and politics. This unease continues amongst contemporary readers of Lacan. Many regard Lacanian philosophy to be inherently conservative and nihilistic, based as it is on a fundamental lack which constitutes the impossibility of society and thus utopian politics. This impossibility has lead some theorists, such as Elizabeth Bellamy, to suggest that psychoanalysis and politics do not mix (Bellamy, 1993). The central criticism appears to be that psychoanalysis relies upon ontological assumptions more than political theory (Robinson, 2004, p.259). Herein lies the fundamental misconception about Lacanian psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is political because it is ontological – psychoanalysis examines the manner in which inherently contingent social constructions are fixed. More than that though, psychoanalysis also exposes that which is not contingent in social constructions: the disavowed exclusions upon which social constructions are founded. Therefore, for both of these reasons, any use of psychoanalysis for social analysis is inherently political.
Centrality of the Lacanian Negative Ontology
Lacanian ontology positions ‘lack’ as the central element of the human condition, the notion of lack being at the root of psychoanalysis’s inescapably political implications. Lack is produced when the subject is ‘castrated’ upon entry into the symbolic order, that is, separated from themselves. Castration occurs because language creates a mediating 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 language refers. Lacan called this gap the Real. 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. Like the Real, Jouissance is also a paradoxical substance. It results from an attempt to return to a state that is without lack. Because of the impossibility of that condition, a second-order modality of enjoyment becomes available for the subject, jouissance.
This alternative experience of jouissance emerges as a substitute for the impossibility of achieving pure Jouissance. As a consequence, jouissance becomes a troubling kind of pleasure; 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. We enjoy blaming the Other for our failures to achieve the fullness we sense we have lost.
Lacan established his system of thought, following Sigmund Freud, primarily for application in the clinical field. However, through the work of Slavoj Žižek in particular, but also Ernesto Laclau and Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacanian theory has become a vastly productive tool for analysis of socio-political formations. Its primary incursion into political theory is to recast the fundamental dualism of politics – the relation between individuals and social formations, between the subject and the object – as a false problem (Osborne, 1996, p.32-33). Psychoanalytic political theory does not, therefore, begin with the question of how the social is able to incorporate individuality, treating the social as a patient who might, for example, be suffering from collective neurosis. Rather the two – the individual and the social, the subject and object – are inseparable; the subject operates only through taking on the discourses of the social. As such, the lack that is inherent to the subject is also a constitutive feature of the social, which Lacan termed ‘the big Other’. Conversely, Lacan twisted this phrase to create the maxim ‘the Big Other doesn’t exist’. By this Lacan meant that the social/symbolic order is never complete, it is always characterised by a lack and is therefore inconsistent. In terms of political analysis, the lack in the social is the primary site of interest for Lacanian study. The operation of fantasy and jouissance is such that the lack in the Other cannot be revealed. It is only through subjects’ attempts to suture this lack that the social maintains its stability.
Objections to the politics of the negative ontology
A number of theorists, even those working within the Lacanian field, doubt the relevance or desirability of a translation of Lacanian ontology into a grounded political practice. Their doubt centres around the possibility of any benefits that can be developed from psychoanalysis’s emphasis on the social’s negative ontological base, that is, lack. Many commentators, such as Sean Homer, Elizabeth Bellamy, Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey, consider Lacanian theory – particularly that embodied by Žižek, the most influential contemporary Lacanian theorist – to be essentially conservative, pessimistic and ineffective. Essentially, they argue that because the Lacanian negative ontological stance reveals the impossibility of fullness and thereby subverts the possibility of the ideal society, Lacanians have given up on the prospect of improving social life. Indeed, Tormey and Robinson contend (in relation to Žižek’s adherence to a negative ontological position) “(T)his sums up what is wrong with Žižek’s position: for all his radical posturing, he restores the same kind of oppressive logic which operates in the present system” (Robinson & Tormey, 2003, p.15). Similarly, in observing that “Lacanians urge that one reconcile oneself to the inevitability of lack”, Robinson argues that “Lacanian politics is therefore about coming to terms with violence, exclusion and antagonism, not about resolving or removing these” (Robinson, 2004, p.260).Furthermore, Homer contends that although psychoanalysis has a critical role within the polito-ideological field, through revealing the contingency of symbolic constructions, this role itself is not a productive factor influence on progressive politics. Instead, Homer argues that the seductive force that is at work within the ideological positions which battle to suture the lack in the social, constitutes the realm of politics proper. Thus, any political movement that does not postulate an ideological position is doomed to impotence. Therefore, if Lacanian theory is to be influential in its interaction with politics, psychoanalysis has to develop an ideological position. Because the development of such an ideology is, however, beyond the realms of psychoanalytic theory, Homer reasons that psychoanalysis has no direct role in politics, only in a “critical dialogue with political and social theory” (Homer, 1996, p.109).
The Role of Psychoanalysis in the Political
These criticisms of the role of psychoanalysis in politics are in many ways reasonable. Because of its orientation around a negative ontological orientation, psychoanalysis has no role in the direct production of a positive imaginary, that is, in politics per se. On the other hand, this limitation is precisely the factor which makes psychoanalysis inescapably political. Because, as Lacan reveals, all reality is a social construction and social constructions are essentially contingent, any partial fixation of meaning that occurs is political in nature. Through its critical analysis of the social, which variously reveals the stabilising influences, the limit points, and the symptoms of the social, Lacanian theory is inherently political and is thus capable of direct interventions into politics. These interventions do not seek, however, to present positive ideological positions, such as liberalism, socialism, feminism, and so on. Rather, they identify the elements whose exclusion is required in order for an ideological formation to be secured, to expose the reliance of those formations upon foundations that they must disavow. This thesis supports the use of psychoanalysis as a discipline of the political. The goal of this thesis is to help establish the role of psychoanalysis in relation to the political and to develop this approach into a methodological position to be applied in the name of radical structural change. Žižek’s development of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and political tool, upon which this thesis builds, follows a rehabilitated notion of universality and a Hegelian/Lacanian take on dialectical materialism. Additionally, Žižek, in a Marxist manner, positions the economy at the centre of political analysis. Through the integration of these elements, Žižek produces what he labels a ‘short-circuit’ analysis. A short-circuit examination occurs when the analyst attempts to reveal the limit points of an ideological discourse, that is, to disclose those elements upon whose exclusion an ideology relies, that are not readily evident within the existing terms of that ideology. It is only through the dialectical notion of totality that such an analysis is possible; to see two sides of the same object.
Dialectical Materialism and UniversalityOf the Lacanian psychoanalysts, it is Žižek who has developed the notion of dialectical materialism furthest. He does so through his concept of the ‘parallax view’ (Žižek, 2006a). The parallax view combines the issues of universality, dialectics and the materialism of jouissance. Žižek argues that there are several different modalities of the parallax, but the two most appropriate to this thesis are the ‘political parallax’ and the parallax of ‘ontological difference’. A parallax – that is, an optical illusion – occurs between two perspectives of an object that appear in the same frame but which have no common ground between them. An example of this might be liberal and socialist politicians together musing on the relation between social and individual rights. In a political parallax, these discourses are not structurally hierarchical; rather they are structured around a fundamental antagonism which prevents a translation between the terms. While political parallaxes will be investigated throughout the thesis, the parallax of ontological difference is the central parallax that informs the methodology being developed here.
The ‘ontological parallax’ best reflects Žižek’s thinking on universality. The notion of parallax, in dialectical fashion, splits the idea of totality into an abstract and a concrete form (producing an abstract universal and a concrete universal). The abstract universal provides hegemonic imaginary horizons that people use to guide their actions – e.g. individual freedom or 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. As an example, liberal democratic discourses may be structured around the empty signifier ‘freedom’, which can be taken to mean any number of things. The content of these meanings is not important. What is important is the structural form that allows ‘freedom’ to stand in for the presence of absence and structure the ideological field of liberal democracy. In turn, the abstract universal extends this horizon as an ideological formation, taking on further signifiers in what Laclau terms a ‘logic of equivalence’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). The condensation of particular elements around a central imaginary horizon through a logic of equivalence offers the prospect of a return to fullness and 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 ontological parallax, 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 between them. 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. Because abstract horizons rely for their stability on the exclusion of particular elements (they being ‘the exception’ to those abstract horizons), strong tension exists between them. 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 an embodiment of the concrete universal (the element that must be excluded in order for the abstract universal to appear coherent), sitting within the abstract universal and within the broad imaginary horizons that establish the identities of social groups, societies, global formations and so on. Its potentially disruptive effects must therefore be domesticated so as to ensure the continuing stability of the universalising discourses. Conversely, a symptom that is left unchecked can dislocate those horizons. An example is illustrative. One version of the abstract universal horizon of global capital is the sustainable advancement of humanity – ‘progress’. In contrast to this imaginary, the concrete universal is the increasing degradation of the global environment. The unsustainable exploitation of natural resources is an exception to the abstract universal, yet necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. The symptom (of the failure of the universal imaginary) is felt through the reporting and effect of climate change itself.A variety of mechanisms exist within ideological formations that can domesticate the effect of the symptom, just as each universal horizon is vulnerable at many points to the symptoms (the ‘unbearable examples’) that they must repress in order to sustain their appearance as legitimate statements about social life. These two separate, but vitally related aspects, constitute the torsion around which pivots the methodological position created in this thesis. The challenge in constructing that methodology is to identify and examine both the techniques that are used for maintaining an ideological position (that occurs through the domestication of symptoms) as well as the potential for achieving radical structural shifts.
Constructing a Methodological Position
Here I closely identify with Žižek’s approach to discourse analysis and philosophy in general as outlined in The Parallax View (2006a). Žižek describes his approach as being a ‘short-circuit’. By a short circuit approach he means 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” (Žižek, 2006, p.ix). Žižek believes, and it is the position adopted in this 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’ (p.13). This is the core orientation at the heart of this thesis; the identification of the internal fault points within a political formation. These internal limit points – symptoms – can be revealed as being vital for the constitution of universal horizons and, thus, their most concrete aspect (giving rise to their naming as ‘concrete universal’). In order to achieve this task, one cannot simply interpret the discursive field. Rather, as Stavrakakis suggests (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.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 suggests that “(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” (Žižek, 1996, p.3).
As a consequence of the fantasmatic background of a universal edifice, ideological critique comes to involve two important moves. The first is to reveal the contingency of each and every construction, to demonstrate that reality is neither natural nor positive. This purely interpretative approach is, however, insufficient for analysis. Instead, the manner in which an ideology grips its subjects needs to be considered. The substance that achieves this outcome, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, is jouissance. As will be developed throughout this thesis, the power of jouissance is such that the subject can be aware of the contingency of their situation and the symptoms inherent to this construction, yet continue to act as if they are unaware of this circumstance. Thus Žižek states, ‘(I)t is not enough to convince the patient of the unconscious truth of his symptom; the unconscious itself must be induced to accept this truth’ (Žižek, 2006a, p.351).
The abstracted ‘short-circuit’ method through which Žižek has intrepretated Lacan has much potential for analysing the political domain. This potential has, however, been obscured somewhat by the abstract, baroque nature of Žižek’s theorising. While this has proven excellent for the discipline of political philosophy, Žižek’s work remains at times a little too divorced from the concrete, grounded world in which the political occurs, that is, politics. This has enabled a certain misinterpretation of Žižek’s political position to proliferate, centred around a critique that suggests that Žižek has no stable political position (Homer, 2001, p.12; Laclau, 2000a, p.289). My aim in constructing a methodological approach from Žižek’s psychoanalytic political philosophy is to develop a portable method for concrete political interventions without losing the theoretical insights that are central to psychoanalytic theory. Herein lies the problem in achieving this task. Any reification of methodological form and content defies the politics of any political methodology – it needs to also be contingent. Therefore, while it is submitted that the methodology suggested by this thesis provides a settled form for analysis, it cannot suggest any concrete content. Rather this must, by definition, change with every application.
Global CapitalThe methodology developed through this thesis seeks to understand how apparently contingent social formations such as ‘global capitalism’ come to enjoy fixed and stable form, and to identify the possibilities that might exist for breaking open these fixed discourses through that disavowed element of them which is not contingent, that is, the concrete universal. To illustrate the potential for such an approach, the method will be applied to the realm of global capital, in particular to two discourses that exist as its disavowed symptoms: poverty and environmentalism. The choice of global capital, as a point of analysis, is political in itself: this thesis takes capital, or more specifically the symptoms of capital, to be a major challenge to the future of humanity. These issues provide a, if not the, major motivational factor behind this endeavour. Nonetheless, this is not a position that needs necessarily be adopted by the reader. Rather, I invite the reader to consider how radical change can be achieved, using the analysis of global capital as an example.
Conversely, at the same time it is important to reiterate that the choice of capitalism as a point of analysis is not arbitrary. Žižek has increasingly sought to posit capital as a modality of the Real. Capital is not the Real in terms of an ahistorical, structural lack, but rather the ‘symbolic Real’, the background for all symbolisation and the point to which all symbolisations must return. In this sense, capital has hegemonised the very grounds of hegemony (Žižek, 1999, p.4; 2000a, p.223; 2000b, p.319). Capitalism is not seen as simply one struggle amongst many, as is the trend in post-modern politics, but rather the struggle of our times. This emphasis is what gives Žižek’s work – and by extension this thesis – a Marxist orientation (Žižek & Daly, 2004, p.146-148).At this point it is important to establish what it is that is meant in reference to capitalism throughout this thesis. Capitalism is both a particular form of economic structural organisation as well as a universalising discourse. Capitalism has become an extraordinarily powerful organising force. It is, however, a very unstable one. The main strength of capitalism is that it is a dynamic dialectical process. Where most systems are destroyed because of their inability to deal with their own irrationality, the strength of capital is that it is able to reincorporate its own exception (Žižek, 2006b, p.174). Indeed, the ‘logic of the exception’ is the process which drives capitalism: what appear to be structural shifts away from capital are brought back into the system as new opportunities for profit. Capitalism requires an ever-increasing rate of profit in order to survive. Profit takes the place of the Lacanian objet a: what appears to be an obstacle is actually the very condition of possibility. Because profit is never fully satisfying, it is lacking, it gives rise to an excess. Capitalism thereby requires an ‘over-accumulation’ of profit (Arrighi, 2005a, p.36; 2005b, p.84-86). For this reason, leftist attempts to ‘tame’ capital in a manner which would simply reduce its rate of profit or the incentive to produce profit – such as a ‘Green’ economy, or market socialism – are doomed to fail (Žižek, 2005b).
Žižek also rejects the common perception that there is a limit to the extent to which capitalism can develop. Rather, any external limits that are encountered are simply turned into opportunities for profit (Žižek & Daly, 2004, p.152). The internet is a salient contemporary example of this: it once constituted an obstacle to the continued hegemony of private property but is now a hugely profitable market place. Rather, Žižek suggests that the weakness of global capital lies within itself; he repeats the Marxist maxim that the only obstacle to capital is capital itself (Žižek, 2001b, p.18). As such, this thesis argues that the strongest possibility for the dislocation of capital lies in the forces unleashed by capitalism itself. Žižek identifies those forces as the concrete universal of the abstract universal, that is, of global capitalism. It is by exposing the concrete universal, by confronting capital with its disavowed foundations, that radical structural change is possible.Practicing concrete universality, however, is not a matter of simply presenting the evidence of the concrete universal, of the irrationality of what is considered rational and of waiting for change to occur. Rather, the core insight of psychoanalytic dialectical materialism is that interpretation is only part of the process. A traversal of the fantasmatic core which produces jouissance is also required. This can be achieved through using as a lever the anxiety that is caused by the incommensurability that is internal to each and every universal position, of each position’s non-coincidence with itself, an anxiety caused by the proximity of the Real. The most efficient manner to generate this anxiety is for the concrete universal itself to place pressure upon the universal horizon. We see this effect in environmental discourse, where the concrete universal (actual climate change) is exerting pressure upon the idea that the high levels of production and consumption associated with capitalism are normal. The concrete universal itself (such as actual climate change) is, of course, not accessible within an academic thesis. Instead the political potential of a text such as this thesis is at best to hold open the place of the symptom in the anticipation of active concrete universals that can produce the dislocations sought.
Thesis StructureThis thesis seeks to develop a line of argument based around the value of Lacanian psychoanalysis for political intervention. The following chapter introduces and outlines the fundamental concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis that are relevant to the thesis and the manner in which these concepts will be used. Most notable are discussions around the different modalities of the Real and of jouissance, as well as the operations of ideology, fantasy and desire. Additionally, Žižek’s concept of universality is introduced further. Furthermore, in order to establish the context in which the thesis operates, the theorists that are salient to the thesis are outlined, most prominently Žižek but also Laclau, Lacan, Marx and Hegel.
Chapter three builds on the perspectives established in the initial foray into psychoanalysis by reviewing the work of Laclau and Žižek. This chapter is formed around the debate between the interpretive and (psycho)analytic positions, as has been staged in the differences between Laclau’s and Žižek’s theoretical orientations. Laclau is a major contributor to the argument developed in the thesis. He works within the Lacanian perspective, although, as I shall develop in chapter three, Laclau’s work does not prove as productive as Žižek’s because of the former's limited conception of the Real. Conversely, Laclau’s ‘Discourse Theory’ does provide an interesting alternative to Žižek, particularly as it appears to offer a more grounded methodological perspective. Nonetheless, the concluding position of this chapter is that it is the psychoanalytic position (taking on the concepts of jouissance and fantasy through an extended notion of the Real) that best explains the grip that ideology exerts upon subjects.
Chapter four introduces the central theoretical insights of the thesis, following on from the discussion of the importance of jouissance for socio-political analysis. The focus of this chapter is the materiality of universality – the influence of jouissance on the universal. In particular, it introduces Žižek’s notion of dialectical materialism, the parallax view, especially in its relation to abstract and concrete universality. As such, the chapter also features discussions on the nature of dialectics and the fundamental role of the symptom.
Chapter five extends discussion on the role of the symptom in a manner that develops the core of the thesis: the construction of a methodological approach to supplement Žižek’s psychoanalytic political philosophy. The chapter details the basic defence mechanisms that come to be used, within the context of an abstract universal, against the symptoms upon which the abstract universal relies but must disavow. Additionally, consideration is given to the possible discursive strategies that can be used to dislocate the universal imaginary via the symptom and the concrete universal.
This methodology is then applied to two separate areas of discourse that form the next two chapters. These areas of discourse, Green ideology and global poverty, represent two of the most salient symptoms of global capital. As such, the application of the methodological position seeks to further develop understanding of the manner in which the symptom is domesticated within a universal horizon. Additionally, the possibilities for generating a radical structural shift via the symptom are considered, particularly in regard to global capital. The thesis concludes with a review of the possibilities that arise from the discursive analyses and returns to the ultimate question of the thesis, the political prospects of Lacanian theory.
[1] Throughout this thesis the Lacanian term ‘Real’ shall be capitalised to distinguish it from the everyday conception of the term
Centrality of the Lacanian Negative Ontology
Lacanian ontology positions ‘lack’ as the central element of the human condition, the notion of lack being at the root of psychoanalysis’s inescapably political implications. Lack is produced when the subject is ‘castrated’ upon entry into the symbolic order, that is, separated from themselves. Castration occurs because language creates a mediating 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 language refers. Lacan called this gap the Real. 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. Like the Real, Jouissance is also a paradoxical substance. It results from an attempt to return to a state that is without lack. Because of the impossibility of that condition, a second-order modality of enjoyment becomes available for the subject, jouissance.
This alternative experience of jouissance emerges as a substitute for the impossibility of achieving pure Jouissance. As a consequence, jouissance becomes a troubling kind of pleasure; 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. We enjoy blaming the Other for our failures to achieve the fullness we sense we have lost.
Lacan established his system of thought, following Sigmund Freud, primarily for application in the clinical field. However, through the work of Slavoj Žižek in particular, but also Ernesto Laclau and Yannis Stavrakakis, Lacanian theory has become a vastly productive tool for analysis of socio-political formations. Its primary incursion into political theory is to recast the fundamental dualism of politics – the relation between individuals and social formations, between the subject and the object – as a false problem (Osborne, 1996, p.32-33). Psychoanalytic political theory does not, therefore, begin with the question of how the social is able to incorporate individuality, treating the social as a patient who might, for example, be suffering from collective neurosis. Rather the two – the individual and the social, the subject and object – are inseparable; the subject operates only through taking on the discourses of the social. As such, the lack that is inherent to the subject is also a constitutive feature of the social, which Lacan termed ‘the big Other’. Conversely, Lacan twisted this phrase to create the maxim ‘the Big Other doesn’t exist’. By this Lacan meant that the social/symbolic order is never complete, it is always characterised by a lack and is therefore inconsistent. In terms of political analysis, the lack in the social is the primary site of interest for Lacanian study. The operation of fantasy and jouissance is such that the lack in the Other cannot be revealed. It is only through subjects’ attempts to suture this lack that the social maintains its stability.
Objections to the politics of the negative ontology
A number of theorists, even those working within the Lacanian field, doubt the relevance or desirability of a translation of Lacanian ontology into a grounded political practice. Their doubt centres around the possibility of any benefits that can be developed from psychoanalysis’s emphasis on the social’s negative ontological base, that is, lack. Many commentators, such as Sean Homer, Elizabeth Bellamy, Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey, consider Lacanian theory – particularly that embodied by Žižek, the most influential contemporary Lacanian theorist – to be essentially conservative, pessimistic and ineffective. Essentially, they argue that because the Lacanian negative ontological stance reveals the impossibility of fullness and thereby subverts the possibility of the ideal society, Lacanians have given up on the prospect of improving social life. Indeed, Tormey and Robinson contend (in relation to Žižek’s adherence to a negative ontological position) “(T)his sums up what is wrong with Žižek’s position: for all his radical posturing, he restores the same kind of oppressive logic which operates in the present system” (Robinson & Tormey, 2003, p.15). Similarly, in observing that “Lacanians urge that one reconcile oneself to the inevitability of lack”, Robinson argues that “Lacanian politics is therefore about coming to terms with violence, exclusion and antagonism, not about resolving or removing these” (Robinson, 2004, p.260).Furthermore, Homer contends that although psychoanalysis has a critical role within the polito-ideological field, through revealing the contingency of symbolic constructions, this role itself is not a productive factor influence on progressive politics. Instead, Homer argues that the seductive force that is at work within the ideological positions which battle to suture the lack in the social, constitutes the realm of politics proper. Thus, any political movement that does not postulate an ideological position is doomed to impotence. Therefore, if Lacanian theory is to be influential in its interaction with politics, psychoanalysis has to develop an ideological position. Because the development of such an ideology is, however, beyond the realms of psychoanalytic theory, Homer reasons that psychoanalysis has no direct role in politics, only in a “critical dialogue with political and social theory” (Homer, 1996, p.109).
The Role of Psychoanalysis in the Political
These criticisms of the role of psychoanalysis in politics are in many ways reasonable. Because of its orientation around a negative ontological orientation, psychoanalysis has no role in the direct production of a positive imaginary, that is, in politics per se. On the other hand, this limitation is precisely the factor which makes psychoanalysis inescapably political. Because, as Lacan reveals, all reality is a social construction and social constructions are essentially contingent, any partial fixation of meaning that occurs is political in nature. Through its critical analysis of the social, which variously reveals the stabilising influences, the limit points, and the symptoms of the social, Lacanian theory is inherently political and is thus capable of direct interventions into politics. These interventions do not seek, however, to present positive ideological positions, such as liberalism, socialism, feminism, and so on. Rather, they identify the elements whose exclusion is required in order for an ideological formation to be secured, to expose the reliance of those formations upon foundations that they must disavow. This thesis supports the use of psychoanalysis as a discipline of the political. The goal of this thesis is to help establish the role of psychoanalysis in relation to the political and to develop this approach into a methodological position to be applied in the name of radical structural change. Žižek’s development of psychoanalysis as a theoretical and political tool, upon which this thesis builds, follows a rehabilitated notion of universality and a Hegelian/Lacanian take on dialectical materialism. Additionally, Žižek, in a Marxist manner, positions the economy at the centre of political analysis. Through the integration of these elements, Žižek produces what he labels a ‘short-circuit’ analysis. A short-circuit examination occurs when the analyst attempts to reveal the limit points of an ideological discourse, that is, to disclose those elements upon whose exclusion an ideology relies, that are not readily evident within the existing terms of that ideology. It is only through the dialectical notion of totality that such an analysis is possible; to see two sides of the same object.
Dialectical Materialism and UniversalityOf the Lacanian psychoanalysts, it is Žižek who has developed the notion of dialectical materialism furthest. He does so through his concept of the ‘parallax view’ (Žižek, 2006a). The parallax view combines the issues of universality, dialectics and the materialism of jouissance. Žižek argues that there are several different modalities of the parallax, but the two most appropriate to this thesis are the ‘political parallax’ and the parallax of ‘ontological difference’. A parallax – that is, an optical illusion – occurs between two perspectives of an object that appear in the same frame but which have no common ground between them. An example of this might be liberal and socialist politicians together musing on the relation between social and individual rights. In a political parallax, these discourses are not structurally hierarchical; rather they are structured around a fundamental antagonism which prevents a translation between the terms. While political parallaxes will be investigated throughout the thesis, the parallax of ontological difference is the central parallax that informs the methodology being developed here.
The ‘ontological parallax’ best reflects Žižek’s thinking on universality. The notion of parallax, in dialectical fashion, splits the idea of totality into an abstract and a concrete form (producing an abstract universal and a concrete universal). The abstract universal provides hegemonic imaginary horizons that people use to guide their actions – e.g. individual freedom or 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. As an example, liberal democratic discourses may be structured around the empty signifier ‘freedom’, which can be taken to mean any number of things. The content of these meanings is not important. What is important is the structural form that allows ‘freedom’ to stand in for the presence of absence and structure the ideological field of liberal democracy. In turn, the abstract universal extends this horizon as an ideological formation, taking on further signifiers in what Laclau terms a ‘logic of equivalence’ (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). The condensation of particular elements around a central imaginary horizon through a logic of equivalence offers the prospect of a return to fullness and 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 ontological parallax, 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 between them. 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. Because abstract horizons rely for their stability on the exclusion of particular elements (they being ‘the exception’ to those abstract horizons), strong tension exists between them. 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 an embodiment of the concrete universal (the element that must be excluded in order for the abstract universal to appear coherent), sitting within the abstract universal and within the broad imaginary horizons that establish the identities of social groups, societies, global formations and so on. Its potentially disruptive effects must therefore be domesticated so as to ensure the continuing stability of the universalising discourses. Conversely, a symptom that is left unchecked can dislocate those horizons. An example is illustrative. One version of the abstract universal horizon of global capital is the sustainable advancement of humanity – ‘progress’. In contrast to this imaginary, the concrete universal is the increasing degradation of the global environment. The unsustainable exploitation of natural resources is an exception to the abstract universal, yet necessary for the continued existence of capitalism. The symptom (of the failure of the universal imaginary) is felt through the reporting and effect of climate change itself.A variety of mechanisms exist within ideological formations that can domesticate the effect of the symptom, just as each universal horizon is vulnerable at many points to the symptoms (the ‘unbearable examples’) that they must repress in order to sustain their appearance as legitimate statements about social life. These two separate, but vitally related aspects, constitute the torsion around which pivots the methodological position created in this thesis. The challenge in constructing that methodology is to identify and examine both the techniques that are used for maintaining an ideological position (that occurs through the domestication of symptoms) as well as the potential for achieving radical structural shifts.
Constructing a Methodological Position
Here I closely identify with Žižek’s approach to discourse analysis and philosophy in general as outlined in The Parallax View (2006a). Žižek describes his approach as being a ‘short-circuit’. By a short circuit approach he means 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” (Žižek, 2006, p.ix). Žižek believes, and it is the position adopted in this 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’ (p.13). This is the core orientation at the heart of this thesis; the identification of the internal fault points within a political formation. These internal limit points – symptoms – can be revealed as being vital for the constitution of universal horizons and, thus, their most concrete aspect (giving rise to their naming as ‘concrete universal’). In order to achieve this task, one cannot simply interpret the discursive field. Rather, as Stavrakakis suggests (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.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 suggests that “(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” (Žižek, 1996, p.3).
As a consequence of the fantasmatic background of a universal edifice, ideological critique comes to involve two important moves. The first is to reveal the contingency of each and every construction, to demonstrate that reality is neither natural nor positive. This purely interpretative approach is, however, insufficient for analysis. Instead, the manner in which an ideology grips its subjects needs to be considered. The substance that achieves this outcome, in Lacanian psychoanalysis, is jouissance. As will be developed throughout this thesis, the power of jouissance is such that the subject can be aware of the contingency of their situation and the symptoms inherent to this construction, yet continue to act as if they are unaware of this circumstance. Thus Žižek states, ‘(I)t is not enough to convince the patient of the unconscious truth of his symptom; the unconscious itself must be induced to accept this truth’ (Žižek, 2006a, p.351).
The abstracted ‘short-circuit’ method through which Žižek has intrepretated Lacan has much potential for analysing the political domain. This potential has, however, been obscured somewhat by the abstract, baroque nature of Žižek’s theorising. While this has proven excellent for the discipline of political philosophy, Žižek’s work remains at times a little too divorced from the concrete, grounded world in which the political occurs, that is, politics. This has enabled a certain misinterpretation of Žižek’s political position to proliferate, centred around a critique that suggests that Žižek has no stable political position (Homer, 2001, p.12; Laclau, 2000a, p.289). My aim in constructing a methodological approach from Žižek’s psychoanalytic political philosophy is to develop a portable method for concrete political interventions without losing the theoretical insights that are central to psychoanalytic theory. Herein lies the problem in achieving this task. Any reification of methodological form and content defies the politics of any political methodology – it needs to also be contingent. Therefore, while it is submitted that the methodology suggested by this thesis provides a settled form for analysis, it cannot suggest any concrete content. Rather this must, by definition, change with every application.
Global CapitalThe methodology developed through this thesis seeks to understand how apparently contingent social formations such as ‘global capitalism’ come to enjoy fixed and stable form, and to identify the possibilities that might exist for breaking open these fixed discourses through that disavowed element of them which is not contingent, that is, the concrete universal. To illustrate the potential for such an approach, the method will be applied to the realm of global capital, in particular to two discourses that exist as its disavowed symptoms: poverty and environmentalism. The choice of global capital, as a point of analysis, is political in itself: this thesis takes capital, or more specifically the symptoms of capital, to be a major challenge to the future of humanity. These issues provide a, if not the, major motivational factor behind this endeavour. Nonetheless, this is not a position that needs necessarily be adopted by the reader. Rather, I invite the reader to consider how radical change can be achieved, using the analysis of global capital as an example.
Conversely, at the same time it is important to reiterate that the choice of capitalism as a point of analysis is not arbitrary. Žižek has increasingly sought to posit capital as a modality of the Real. Capital is not the Real in terms of an ahistorical, structural lack, but rather the ‘symbolic Real’, the background for all symbolisation and the point to which all symbolisations must return. In this sense, capital has hegemonised the very grounds of hegemony (Žižek, 1999, p.4; 2000a, p.223; 2000b, p.319). Capitalism is not seen as simply one struggle amongst many, as is the trend in post-modern politics, but rather the struggle of our times. This emphasis is what gives Žižek’s work – and by extension this thesis – a Marxist orientation (Žižek & Daly, 2004, p.146-148).At this point it is important to establish what it is that is meant in reference to capitalism throughout this thesis. Capitalism is both a particular form of economic structural organisation as well as a universalising discourse. Capitalism has become an extraordinarily powerful organising force. It is, however, a very unstable one. The main strength of capitalism is that it is a dynamic dialectical process. Where most systems are destroyed because of their inability to deal with their own irrationality, the strength of capital is that it is able to reincorporate its own exception (Žižek, 2006b, p.174). Indeed, the ‘logic of the exception’ is the process which drives capitalism: what appear to be structural shifts away from capital are brought back into the system as new opportunities for profit. Capitalism requires an ever-increasing rate of profit in order to survive. Profit takes the place of the Lacanian objet a: what appears to be an obstacle is actually the very condition of possibility. Because profit is never fully satisfying, it is lacking, it gives rise to an excess. Capitalism thereby requires an ‘over-accumulation’ of profit (Arrighi, 2005a, p.36; 2005b, p.84-86). For this reason, leftist attempts to ‘tame’ capital in a manner which would simply reduce its rate of profit or the incentive to produce profit – such as a ‘Green’ economy, or market socialism – are doomed to fail (Žižek, 2005b).
Žižek also rejects the common perception that there is a limit to the extent to which capitalism can develop. Rather, any external limits that are encountered are simply turned into opportunities for profit (Žižek & Daly, 2004, p.152). The internet is a salient contemporary example of this: it once constituted an obstacle to the continued hegemony of private property but is now a hugely profitable market place. Rather, Žižek suggests that the weakness of global capital lies within itself; he repeats the Marxist maxim that the only obstacle to capital is capital itself (Žižek, 2001b, p.18). As such, this thesis argues that the strongest possibility for the dislocation of capital lies in the forces unleashed by capitalism itself. Žižek identifies those forces as the concrete universal of the abstract universal, that is, of global capitalism. It is by exposing the concrete universal, by confronting capital with its disavowed foundations, that radical structural change is possible.Practicing concrete universality, however, is not a matter of simply presenting the evidence of the concrete universal, of the irrationality of what is considered rational and of waiting for change to occur. Rather, the core insight of psychoanalytic dialectical materialism is that interpretation is only part of the process. A traversal of the fantasmatic core which produces jouissance is also required. This can be achieved through using as a lever the anxiety that is caused by the incommensurability that is internal to each and every universal position, of each position’s non-coincidence with itself, an anxiety caused by the proximity of the Real. The most efficient manner to generate this anxiety is for the concrete universal itself to place pressure upon the universal horizon. We see this effect in environmental discourse, where the concrete universal (actual climate change) is exerting pressure upon the idea that the high levels of production and consumption associated with capitalism are normal. The concrete universal itself (such as actual climate change) is, of course, not accessible within an academic thesis. Instead the political potential of a text such as this thesis is at best to hold open the place of the symptom in the anticipation of active concrete universals that can produce the dislocations sought.
Thesis StructureThis thesis seeks to develop a line of argument based around the value of Lacanian psychoanalysis for political intervention. The following chapter introduces and outlines the fundamental concepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis that are relevant to the thesis and the manner in which these concepts will be used. Most notable are discussions around the different modalities of the Real and of jouissance, as well as the operations of ideology, fantasy and desire. Additionally, Žižek’s concept of universality is introduced further. Furthermore, in order to establish the context in which the thesis operates, the theorists that are salient to the thesis are outlined, most prominently Žižek but also Laclau, Lacan, Marx and Hegel.
Chapter three builds on the perspectives established in the initial foray into psychoanalysis by reviewing the work of Laclau and Žižek. This chapter is formed around the debate between the interpretive and (psycho)analytic positions, as has been staged in the differences between Laclau’s and Žižek’s theoretical orientations. Laclau is a major contributor to the argument developed in the thesis. He works within the Lacanian perspective, although, as I shall develop in chapter three, Laclau’s work does not prove as productive as Žižek’s because of the former's limited conception of the Real. Conversely, Laclau’s ‘Discourse Theory’ does provide an interesting alternative to Žižek, particularly as it appears to offer a more grounded methodological perspective. Nonetheless, the concluding position of this chapter is that it is the psychoanalytic position (taking on the concepts of jouissance and fantasy through an extended notion of the Real) that best explains the grip that ideology exerts upon subjects.
Chapter four introduces the central theoretical insights of the thesis, following on from the discussion of the importance of jouissance for socio-political analysis. The focus of this chapter is the materiality of universality – the influence of jouissance on the universal. In particular, it introduces Žižek’s notion of dialectical materialism, the parallax view, especially in its relation to abstract and concrete universality. As such, the chapter also features discussions on the nature of dialectics and the fundamental role of the symptom.
Chapter five extends discussion on the role of the symptom in a manner that develops the core of the thesis: the construction of a methodological approach to supplement Žižek’s psychoanalytic political philosophy. The chapter details the basic defence mechanisms that come to be used, within the context of an abstract universal, against the symptoms upon which the abstract universal relies but must disavow. Additionally, consideration is given to the possible discursive strategies that can be used to dislocate the universal imaginary via the symptom and the concrete universal.
This methodology is then applied to two separate areas of discourse that form the next two chapters. These areas of discourse, Green ideology and global poverty, represent two of the most salient symptoms of global capital. As such, the application of the methodological position seeks to further develop understanding of the manner in which the symptom is domesticated within a universal horizon. Additionally, the possibilities for generating a radical structural shift via the symptom are considered, particularly in regard to global capital. The thesis concludes with a review of the possibilities that arise from the discursive analyses and returns to the ultimate question of the thesis, the political prospects of Lacanian theory.
[1] Throughout this thesis the Lacanian term ‘Real’ shall be capitalised to distinguish it from the everyday conception of the term
Abstract
Lacanian psychoanalysis, embodied in contemporary thought by Slavoj Žižek’s dialectical materialist rehabilitation of universality, enables a form of political analysis based on the possibility of structural change. Many political theorists argue that because psychoanalysis stresses the negative ontological base of the social (the Real) it is fundamentally conservative and nihilistic. Conversely, the very political value of psychoanalysis lies in its accent on the Real. However, there are two separate psychoanalytic perspectives on the Real. The idealist approach, which contends that every social construction is essentially conditional, is politically and theoretically limited. In contrast, Žižek’s materialist perspective emphasises the fundamental fixity which lies in the necessary exclusion from a universal horizon. Thus, the main political insight of Lacanian psychoanalysis is not to reveal the contingency of the social, but rather the disavowed foundation on which these constructions are based; the concrete universal. This thesis argues for a Žižek-inspired psychoanalytic approach to the political which ‘practices concrete universality’. Conversely, while Žižek himself considers his own theoretical endeavours as an application of this task, his work can appear to be at times abstract and obscure, such that the reader is not sure exactly what it is that Žižek is arguing. As such, this thesis seeks to develop a methodological position that practices concrete universality, taking on the fundamental insights of Žižek’s position whilst grounding them in a methodology which can be applied for political intervention. The methodology analyses both the manner in which universal imaginaries domesticate the effect of the symptom (that which represents the concrete universal) and the possibilities for practicing concrete universality and in doing so evoking radical structural change. These possibilities are considered against global capital, which Žižek describes as a modality of the Real. Capital has produced a paradoxical and pressing condition in humanity is living both well beyond and beneath its material needs and the finite capacity of the planet to provide for those needs. Rather than seeking an impossible utopian revolution (the removal of all lack), by evoking the concrete universal it is hoped that humanity can rid itself of that lack which is historical contingent; global capital.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Core Questions and Chapter Outline
Core Questions: The core question that is driving this thesis revolves around the impotence of capitalist symptoms in terms of producing a dislocation of global capital. As such, I am attempting to generate a theoretical methodology, through Zizekian psychoanalysis, that is productive for understanding this impotence. More than this though, I would like the methodology to suggest ways out of the capitalist cycle. In the process of this investigation, I will apply my methodology to two discourses of global capitalism with particularly salient symptoms; global poverty and global change. At the end of this I hope to extend my understanding of the apparent deadlock between capital and its symptoms and suggest possible alternative strategies to go beyond this deadlock.
Current Chapter Outline
Chapter 2;
Chapter Two introduces and outlines the concepts, and the manner in which these concepts will be used, in the thesis. These concepts include;
- The Real
- Jouissance
- Desire
- Fantasy
- Objet a
- Universality.
As well, the theorists that are used by Zizek, and in the Thesis are also outlined. This establishes the context in which the thesis operates. Some of this may possibly be moved to the introductory chapter.
The theorists are;
- Lacan
- Marx
- Hegel
- Laclau
Chapter 3
This chapter is formed by a debate between the interpretive and (psycho) analytic positions staged by the differences in theory between Lalau and Zizek. The conclusion taken is that only the psychoanalytic position (taking on the concepts of jouissance and fantasy through an extended notion of the Real) can adequetely explain the grip of ideology.
Chapter 4
This is the main theoretical chapter, focusing on the materiality of universality ( the influence of jouissance on the universal). In particular it introduces the Parallax View in its relation to abstract and concrete universality. Also features discussions on dialectics and symptoms
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 is the methodological chapter of the thesis, laying out the approach that will be applied to the following discursive analysis chapters. As such, along with Chapter 4, it forms the basis of my theoretical position. The chapter details the basic defence mechanisms used within an abstract universal against the symptom. Alternatively, discursive strategies used to break up the abstract universal via the concrete universal are considered.
The chapter also stages a transition from a fairly neutral theoretical position to a more explicitly political one.
Planned Chapters
Introduction and Conclusion
Discursive Analysis of Green Ideology
Discursive Analysis of Global Poverty
What can be done/ synthesis chapter
Current Chapter Outline
Chapter 2;
Chapter Two introduces and outlines the concepts, and the manner in which these concepts will be used, in the thesis. These concepts include;
- The Real
- Jouissance
- Desire
- Fantasy
- Objet a
- Universality.
As well, the theorists that are used by Zizek, and in the Thesis are also outlined. This establishes the context in which the thesis operates. Some of this may possibly be moved to the introductory chapter.
The theorists are;
- Lacan
- Marx
- Hegel
- Laclau
Chapter 3
This chapter is formed by a debate between the interpretive and (psycho) analytic positions staged by the differences in theory between Lalau and Zizek. The conclusion taken is that only the psychoanalytic position (taking on the concepts of jouissance and fantasy through an extended notion of the Real) can adequetely explain the grip of ideology.
Chapter 4
This is the main theoretical chapter, focusing on the materiality of universality ( the influence of jouissance on the universal). In particular it introduces the Parallax View in its relation to abstract and concrete universality. Also features discussions on dialectics and symptoms
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 is the methodological chapter of the thesis, laying out the approach that will be applied to the following discursive analysis chapters. As such, along with Chapter 4, it forms the basis of my theoretical position. The chapter details the basic defence mechanisms used within an abstract universal against the symptom. Alternatively, discursive strategies used to break up the abstract universal via the concrete universal are considered.
The chapter also stages a transition from a fairly neutral theoretical position to a more explicitly political one.
Planned Chapters
Introduction and Conclusion
Discursive Analysis of Green Ideology
Discursive Analysis of Global Poverty
What can be done/ synthesis chapter
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