Making his Marx; Zizek's theory of capitalism

Sublime Object (1989)

In this first work, Zizek establishes himself as a Lacanian analyst of contemporary ideology, in conjunction with a return to Hegel. Zizek’s treatment of Marx is mixed. He produces in-depth discussions around the concepts of commodity form/fetish, ideology and the symptom. These analyses are positive towards Marx only in regards to the symptom. Zizek contends that for Lacan, Marx invented the symptom, although Marx was not aware of the Lacanian connotations of his discovery.

Marx’s discovery of the symptom lies in his identification of a place with no place within a universal entity. Bourgeois ideology identifies this place as an external/contingent aberration to the normal functioning of capital, but, vitally, Marx contends that this symptomatic element contains the Truth of capital. As an example of this interpretative procedure, Zizek examines the relationship between freedom and labour. In capitalism, all men are free; there exists no formal inequality between citizens. However, as part of this freedom, workers are free to sell their labour on the market. This necessary act, without which there would be no formal/abstract freedom, removes the freedom of those selling their labour. This notion of a particular element that subverts its own universal foundation is later developed in the Lacanian notion of a symptom. Comparable examples are also found in private property (we are all free to own private property, but because others own private property, the majority are not able own property as a means of production and are forced to sell their labour). This latter point is expanded on in For they know not what they do.

According to Zizek, however, Marx’s mistake was to attempt to remove the symptom, yet maintain capitalist productivity in an attempt to produce a utopian socialism. This attempt at positivisation, which also affects the Marxist notions of commodity fetishism and ideology, is an incommensurable barrier between psychoanalysis and several elements of Marxist theory.

Conversely, Zizek notes the fundamental homology between the logics of surplus value (Marx/capital) and surplus enjoyment (Lacan/subjectivity), although he reminds the reader that this link is not one made by Marx, who was historically unaware of the ‘turn to language’ which has produced this homology.

Additionally, The Sublime Object of Ideology is also notable for Zizek’s construction of the Real. As he later notes in For They Know Not What They Do, in this early text Zizek takes a ‘transcendental’ approach to the Real, one that produces a defeatist/conservative political logic. In regards to capital, whilst Zizek conceives of an incommensurable structural deficit in capital (class struggle), his position (established in regards to democracy) is not that we should attempt to remove this antagonism ( a la Marxist utopian socialism), but rather “come to terms with it and establish one’s terms with it”

For they know not what they do (1991)

Like Sublime Object, Zizek introduces For they know not what they do by stating that the book is moulded by three centres “Hegelian dialectics, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and contemporary criticism of ideology” all circulating around a symptom of Zizek’s personal enjoyment of pop culture. Ultimately, like Zizek’s previous book, he aims to use Lacanian psychoanalysis for political/ideological analysis.

This book features a long discussion on the relationship between Master signifiers and the commodity form, centring around money as a ‘general equivalent’ of all commodities. Commodity form is a central concept in all of Zizek main texts, although it is not a concept that I fully understand.

Perhaps the major step (in Zizek’s use of Marx) in this text is his identification of class struggle as the Real; “ the hitch which gives rise to ever-new symbolisations by means of which one endeavours to integrate and domesticate it, but which simultaneously condemns these endeavours to failure”.

Zizek states that class struggle is nowhere a positive entity (which perhaps explains why he never attempts to define the term?), yet it holds together society. Not as an ultimate guarantee allowing us to grasp society as a rational totality, but rather as a point of reference towards which all symbolisations point.

The Ticklish Subject (1999)

This book marks a major change in Zizek’s work, from ideological critique of social life (often directed at pop culture), to applied political critique, with, for the first time, an avowed anti-capitalist position;

“While this book is philosophical in its basic tenor, it is first and foremost an engaged political intervention, addressing the burning question of how we are to reformulate a leftist, anti-capitalist political project in our era of global capitalism and its ideological supplement, liberal democratic multi-culturalism”.

Despite the change in focus, there is no explicit focus on Marx. However, it is important to note that in the years between 1991 and 1999, Zizek produced the ‘Wo es war’ series, which states in it’s introductory blurb “The premise of the series is that the explosive combination of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxist tradition detonates a dynamic freedom that enables us to question the very presuppositions of the circuit of capital”. Interestingly, none of the major texts in this series (Did somebody say totalitarianism?, The plague of fantasies) feature any notable Marxist analyses. Perhaps the status of this series is that of vanishing mediator, allowing the transition between Zizek’s earlier and later projects.

Conversely, Zizek also begins to indicate a homology between his Hegelian position of (concrete) universality and Marx’s concept of the proletariat. The proletariat stand for the universal humanity, not because they are the lowest class, but because they are a symptom of the whole. True Universalists, states Zizek, do not preach tolerance and global unity, but rather fight passionately for universal Truth. As such, Badiou states that the task is not to translate the struggle into the existing order of being, but rather undermine the very under of positive positions. Here Zizek qua Marx makes an important distinction between the proletariat and the working class, because of the former’s subjective position in relation to Truth and the order of being.

Zizek again contends that capital (although, notably not class struggle) is the Real;
"In socioeconomic terms, we are tempted to say that capital is the Real of our age (not the contemporising contingency). Zizek sights the 'solipsistic' speculation on futures, first developed in Marx's interpretation of the self-enhancing circulation of capital, as an example of an operation of the real, an operation which is based upon the material environment and bodies of other people, and upon which it feeds like a giant parasite (although, we should not that this parasite also feeds many of those bodies, and many particularly well; no form of economic reproduction has ever managed to provide a better surplus).

Zizek claims that this is the difference between Lacanian reality and the real. Reality is the social reality of the actual people/environment involved in the interactive production process, the real the abstract spectral logic of capital which determines what goes on in social reality. Note the different between class struggle as an unseen antagonism which operates as the Real and abstract financial capital as the Real.

Zizek also produces an (impossible) challenge, one that could perhaps be read as directed to himself;

"This is our situation today; after the breakdown of the Marxist notion that capitalism itself generates the force that will destroy it in the guise of the proletariat, none of the critics of capitalism, none of those who describe so convincingly the deadly vortex into which the so-called process of globalisation is drawing us, has any well-defined notion of how we can get rid of capitalism. In short, I am not preaching a simple return to the old notions of class struggle and socialist revolution: the question of how it is really possible to undermine the global capitalist system is not a rhetorical one- maybe it is not really possible, at least not in the foreseeable future"

" So, there are two attitudes left, either today's Left nostalgically engages in the ritualistic incarnation of old formulas, be it those of revolutionary communism or welfare state social democracy dismissing postmodernism as a guise for capitalism, or it accepts capitalism as the only game in town through the third way"

Zizek states that the biggest move of the 'end of ideology' era is the rapid depoliticisation of the sphere of the economy; the way the economic functions is explicitly taken to be the objective state of things. He contends that as long as the depoliticisation of the economy is accepted, all other talk of rights is empty. There needs to be a subordination of the process of production to social control - the radical repolicisation of the economy.

Thus, today's ‘postmodern/post-marxist’ politics cannot be universal because they silently exclude the domain of the economy. Zizek suggests that rather than focusing on what is changing in politics and society, we should see the point around which they are rotating - the economy, profit and class struggle.However, Zizek does not want to downplay these 'tremendous advances' in favour of some economic essentialism;


"In short, I (Zizek) am pleading for a 'return to the primacy of the economy' not to the detriment of the issues raised by post-modern forms of politicisation, but precisely in order to create the conditions for the more effective realisation of feminist, ecological and so on, demands"

The Parallax View (2006)

In this latest text, Zizek appears to move back to his roots via a reformulated notion of ideological critique. The Parallax View is the first major text in his new ‘short-circuit’ series, which aims to confront a text with its disavowed foundations “The reader should not have simply learned something new, the point is, rather, to make them aware of another – disturbing- side of something they knew all the time”. In doing so Zizek hopes to combine ideological critique with Hegelian/Lacanian psychoanalysis for political ends. However, notions of a ‘new universal’ and the explicitly anti-capitalism of The Ticklish Subject have disappeared.

Zizek’s main theoretical device in this text is the notion of a parallax – “the confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral ground is possible”. Zizek contends that the parallax is vital to a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism (in contrast to a Kantian antinomy, between which no dialectical transition is possible). The restoration of dialectical materialism, in turn, is vital to a restoration of Marxism. In this statement, Zizek returns to his ever-present relationship with the Marxist tradition, without getting too close to his subject.

The Parallax View does feature an in depth discussion of Marxism through the notion of parallax, but is one that is both enlightening and confounding. Zizek provides a productive discussion on the parallax of consumption and production, arguing that post-Marx Marxism made an error in separating the (illusory) domain of consumption/appearance and production/essence. Instead, Zizek views consumption and production as a parallax within capital; neither is the deeper truth of the other. On the other hand, Zizek utilisation of the parallax view leads him to a division between politics and the economy, which appears to be in contradistinction with the call for a repolicisation of the economy found in his earlier work;

"Is not the ultimate Marxian parallax, however, the one between economy and politics - between the 'critique of political economy' with its logic of commodities and the political struggle, with its logic of antagonism? Both logics are transcendental, not ontico-empirical; and they are both irreducible to each other (class struggle is inscribed into the very heart of economy, yet has to remain absent, nonthematised- recall how the manuscript of capital Vol.II abruptly ends with it; and class struggle is ultimately 'about' economic power relations) but this very mutual implication is twisted so that it prevents any direct contact (any direct translation of political struggle into a mere mirroring of economic interests is doomed to fail, as is any reduction of the sphere of economic production to a secondary reified sedimentation of an underlying founding political process)”.

Zizek states that practioners of 'pure politics' like Badiou, Ranciere, Balibar and Laclau aim to reduce the economy to an 'ontic' sphere, deprived of its ontological dignity. There is no place for a Marxian critique of political economy. But does one have to make a choice between them? Either we have a critique of the economy and the political as a theatre of appearances, or the political, with the economy simply the servicing of goods.

Certainly in contemporary society the latter is the case, but this does not fit with Zizek's previous comments that we must repoliticise the economy, resist the current depoliticisation of the economy. I am unsure whether Zizek is describing a current, ontic-empirical parallax caused by the Real of class struggle or a transcendental logic. If it is the former, are we to attempt to bring the two sides together? Or is it a matter of repolicising the economy in a different manner; Not a positivised construction of the economy, but rather the economy as class struggle? Or are they two positions (that of a parallax between the economy and politics, and the call for a repolicisation of the economy evident in The Ticklish Subject) a parallax within Zizek’s work? Or an antinomy?

Additionally, Zizek usefully suggests that the prime candidate for today’s universal singular is those in the slums of large 3rd world cities. This mass of people (by no means a minority) are not an excess, a redundant surplus, they are incorporated into the global economy (the main reason for the sudden rise in population is the entry of 3rd world agriculture producers into the global economy, being beaten down by the 1st world). These people are the lumpen proletariat; Zizek calls for a more detailed analysis of their role in the global economy. However, Zizek does note that while Marx's working class are defined in terms of economic exploitation, the defining feature of slum dwellers is socio-political; they are the living dead of capitalism; a refugees refugee.

In Zizek more than himself?

My interest is in the applications, and limits, of Slavoj Zizek’s work for anti-capitalist political theorist. Zizek’s central political value is lies in his notion of ideology and in ideological critique as a form of political intervention. Zizek’s concept of ideology is based on the split movement between the founding negative ontology of the social and the imaginary ‘want-to-be’ for universality qua full identity. Zizek uses ideology to theorise the economies of enjoyment that are incited by this paradoxical process. It is enjoyment via ideology that pushes the subject to identify with ‘abstract/imaginary’ universality rather than coming to grips with negativity. The latter identification causes the potential for radical change. Thus, via ideological critique, Zizek’s analysis of the social is highly productive for negative politics and potentially for inducing radical social change. On the other hand, there are two major problems with his theoretical edifice that I seek to examine;

Firstly, whilst Zizek persists in calling for a repoliticisation of the capitalist economy, through the sustained and concrete application of ideological critique, he himself does not fully accomplish this task. I seek to investigate whether this is a contingent oversight, or reveals a certain (necessary) failure in Zizek’s work. Secondly Zizek’s work, following a (post)modern rejection of normatively, allows for no inherent basis to an alternative order.

We must ask then;
- What is the value of Zizek for anti-capitalist political theory?
- Can these failures be avoided with the addition of another signifier/extension of Zizek’s work?
- Or, by applying Zizek’s theory to himself should we consider these failures his own concrete universal, the exception to his work which acts as its positive condition?
- If this is the case, should Zizek’s work be abandoned by the anti-capitalist cause, or short-circuit to go beyond its own boundaries?


To establish the value of Zizek’s work for anti-capitalist political theory, we must first examine his conception of ideology and ideological critique. As a philosopher of what exists (and, correspondingly, that what is non-existent – the Real) Zizek is exceptional. His work utilises Lacanian psychoanalysis, combined with Hegelian dialectics, to produce notions of ideology and universality which are highly productive for political analysis. The operation of ideology is what maintains the capitalist system, despite its apparent contradictions/exceptions (extreme poverty, environmental degradation etc…). Thus any form of critique which seeks to destabilise capitalism must consider the functioning of ideology within capital.

Ideology operates because of the negative ontology which modulates the operation of the symbolic order. The symbolic is negativity charged because symbolisation always fails; it is never completely able to represent the ‘thing’. The failure of symbolisation produces a lack in the subject; the failure of the symbolic produces the Real, that which the symbolic has been unable to signify. Yet the subject is constituted by an imaginary ‘want-to-be’ which attempts to revoke the affect of the Real. This desire means that the lack of the Real is experienced by the subject as a positive condition, pushing the subject to find that one additional signifier that will fully suture the social.

Desire qua identification operates through ideological fantasy; fantasy teaches the subject how to desire, supporting their desire. Ideological fantasy attempts to produce a universal identification by grouping signifiers together around a master signifier, otherwise known in Lacanian terms as objet petit a, the object of the subject’s desire. The illusion is that by obtaining the missing object/signifier the subject can be whole – universal. In order to produce this affect of wholeness, those signifiers which do not fit with the master signifier must be excluded; these exclusions are an affect of the Real.

The existence of non-identity within identity takes two predominant forms. The most commonly identified form of non-identity is the constitutive outside, which operates as an external antagonism. The constitutive outside establishes the identity of the inside. The standard ideological operation is to produce a false dichotomy of us/them. ‘They’ being responsible for the failure of the universalising imaginary. The displacement of lack through ideology dilutes the ontological anxiety caused by non-identity. This is not to suggest that a constitutive outside is an ideological illusion. All systems require an exterior to define the boundaries of the system. What is ideological is the use of the exterior to give cause to the dislocatory affect of the Real.

The affect of the Real within the symbolic is given form by symptoms, which are epiphenomena of the concrete universal. The operation of universality is split in a parallax between abstract universality and concrete universality. Abstract universality is the systematic performance which facilitates the subjects ‘want-to-be’ in terms of identification. As noted, the central mechanism of abstract universality is ideological fantasy. What ideological fantasy has to deal with is the ontological anxiety produced by the split in universality. The other side of the parallax within universality is the concrete universal. The concrete universal is the necessary exception to the abstract imaginary, the element which is strictly not of the genus, but yet is necessary for its continued functioning. Thus, for the abstract universal to function, it must repression the concrete universal. The effect is an ontological parallax; one cannot hold the split forms of universality together. The gap within universality is the Real; it is the materialist Truth of the symbolic system – the concrete universal is the concrete representation of existence.

A symptom is the evidence of the concrete universal within the universal imaginary. As such, the symptom produces much anxiety. It is this anxiety which ideological fantasy seeks to nullify. The operation of ideology is particularly complex, functioning according to the concrete circumstances of the situation. We can, however, seek to understand (as Zizek does) the formal operation of ideology, given the overall direction of its functioning; servicing the subjects want-to-be in the face of the lack in the Other. In the social, this lack is expressed as exclusions; the role of ideology is to nullify these exclusions in order to maintain the hegemonic horizon. The most common ideological operation is to reproduce exclusion in a more palpable form, either as a contingent and temporal blimp, or as the result of external elements. The latter operation is particularly powerful, based as it is on the postulated of a ‘constitutive outside’ that maintains the status of identity.

Two other mechanisms operate within capitalist identity, that of super-ego and cynical reason/fetishism. Super-ego demand operates in the apparent face of the failure of capital, acting a suturing device and a point of enjoyment for the subject. Super-ego demand can only produce a limited suturing, as we see with the operation of charities – after a while the subject says enough – before reverting back to an ideological position. The ultimate effect of super-ego is that it forestalls the anxiety of the symptom, providing a temporary suture by helping the subject see the structural necessity of exclusion.

In contrast, cynical reason has the structure of a fetish. Rather than Marx’s ‘They don’t know that they are doing it, but they are’, Zizek suggests that the structure of late capitalist subjectivity is such that “They know very well what they are doing, but they are still doing it”. Thus the subject may well know that capitalism is a flawed system, causing misery that they themselves find unacceptable, yet they still operate as if this is not the cause. Such reasoning is built on a fetish, generally a commodity fetish, which provides objects of affective investment for the subject, such that the dislocating power of the exception can be ignored. Additionally, there is a fetish of a false dichotomy; communism has failed, capitalism has proved successful, therefore the failures of capitalism can only be dealt with by capitalism itself. Such an argument relies on a formalist logic, rejected by Zizek’s ideological critique.

Zizek’s notion of ideological critique employs a dialectical materialist logic. The central premise of ideological critique, states Zizek, is not to reveal something new, but rather to unveil a disturbing underside to that which is already known. As an illustration, the presence of absolute and horrific poverty is well acknowledged in the western world. The various ideological mechanisms documented in this article are employed to pacified the anxiety which stems from this element of non-identity (poverty in a system designed for wealth production). The role of ideological critique is to break down the functioning of ideology, thus loosening the effectiveness of its stabilising mechanisms. In doing so that which is hidden by ideology (in form, not content) is revealed – that poverty is constitutive of capitalism.

As a result, Zizek’s work on ideological critique functions as a mode of political intervention. Zizek’s ideological critique seeks to identify those symptomatic elements within ideology that can be loosened from its grasp. These symptoms are evidence of the concrete universal – the necessary exclusion within an abstract universal imaginary – which offer the prospect of the radical overturning of the current order. Through ideological critique, Zizek seeks to produce an ontological anxiety which cannot be sutured via another signifier.

There appears, on the surface at least, little reason why such a political method cannot be applied to an analysis of capitalism. Certainly Zizek attends to this task in a typically eclectic fashion. What his work lacks is the applied analysis of capitalism, identifying those symptomatic elements which, in their incomplete relationship with ideology, may hold possibility for political transformation. Additionally, I may find it beneficial to use Marxist economic analysis to accomplish this task.

It is the addition of Marxism, however, which has proven controversial in Zizek’s work. Many critics, such as otherwise ally Ernesto Laclau have argued that Zizek’s work is made up of sophisticated Lacanian theory and unrefined Marxist-Leninism. Perhaps here we need to distinguish between Zizek’s use of the latter for economic analysis and political prescription[i]. It is Zizek’s politics, in terms of Zizek’s positing of positive alternative political compositions, which has proved more controversial.

Zizek rejects any political change within the existing capitalist formation. Instead, he argues, a whole new matrix of ideological understanding is required. The socio-political form of this conceptual matrix, however, is a manner on which Zizek is noticeable silent. This silence contains both the production of structural alternatives to the current hegemony – alternative systems for the production and reproduction of shared social life - or the normative values which could underlay that system. Indeed, one is not even certain if Zizek truly believes that an alternative system is possible in the sense that what is to come will not be recognised as a system at all by our current co-ordinates. Again, in this formulation, Zizek cannot get past purely negative politics, a form of politics which seeks to destruct the present within the possibility of a future.

If Zizek does produce normative/alternative statements, these appear to have a ‘journalistic quality’ or to be a matter of person opinion. In both cases there appears to be little link with has theoretical edifice. Certainly the theoretical depth which is evident in his work on universality and ideology is absent. My question is whether this discrepancy is purely contingent, or is it necessary, taking on the concrete universal of Zizek’s work. If the latter is the case, then must Zizek’s work be dismissed as a political alternative? (Or used for what it is; a brilliantly insightful form of ideological critique, but nothing more?). Alternatively, in a Zizekian twist, can this lack be seen as a positive condition for Zizek’s work? Still further, can we short-circuit Zizek, say through the use of a Marxist analysis of political economy in order to take Zizek beyond his own inherent confinement?

Following the identification of problems here, I need to undertake a literature review of the various critiques of Zizek. This will enable me to see what is out there and do it better, or at least differently. At this stage I am envisioning that my thesis is still a Zizekian thesis (that is, pro-Zizek). I do not want to reject Zizek, but rather to move beyond him. The question is how to do this; to go back to his original sources (as Wendy suggests) and find different interpretations, or is to use differing discourses to short-circuit his work. Perhaps a discussion on theoretical/research method would be valuable. Can a critique of Zizek be achieved in Zizekian manner?$

[i] Nonetheless, there do remain several issues with the fusion of Lacan and Marx

On Badiou

Alain Badiou is a theorist of change. His primary philosophical focus is the analysis of the possibility and existence of the new in any given situation. Novelty does not, however, appear from some previously unknown exteriority, but rather emerges from within the situated circumstances of the existing. What Badiou is most interested in is new ‘events’ that emerge with such destructive force that they alter the structuring co-ordinates of the present. Badiou’s notion of the event has much in common with the Lacanian Act. Indeed, his whole theoretical edifice is, for the most part, consistent with Lacanian psychoanalysis. As such, whilst Badiou focuses on the possibility of radical political change, like Lacanian psychoanalysis, his work is accussed of being politically conservative or impotent. This paper seeks to review this accusation through an analysis of Badiou’s position on change. It is found that in comparison to the most prominent contemporary advocate of the Lacanian Act- Slavoj Zizek- Badiou’s work places too much emphasis on the event and too little on the political ground work- what Zizek labels ideological critique- that goes into producing an event/Act.

Badiou makes a sharp distinction between repetition (the realm of knowledge, the existing ideological parameters of the social) and disruption in the form of events (Johnston, 2007, p.2). Badiou contends that nothing new can come from knowledge and as such it is not worth the interest of the philosopher, nor the politician, or at least the radical political analyst. Instead Badiou proposes a politics focused on the prospects of rupture or discontinuity within knowledge, as caused by an event.

Much of Badiou’s philosophy is based on developing the distinction between these two categories, although, as we shall later develop it is the link/gap between the two which holds more political interest. The social world is considered to be a state of constant flux, but this movement comes in different categories and degrees. As such Badiou proposes the general category of becoming the signify the movement of the social realm. Elements do not just exist, they enter into the realm of being and ‘become’. Becoming is divided into modification (becoming without any real change) and site, a place with the potential give rise to real change. Speaking in Zizekian terms, site can be considered to be the area where the symptom and concrete universal come to match up, either through the strength of the excluded concrete universal or the failure of ideological shock absorbers to deal with its symptomatic excess.

Site itself is sub-divided into deed/occurrence- a site which, while not strictly a modification (it is outside of the ideological realm) lacks the affective performative element that would produce a strong situational effect - and singularity, a site with possibility of producing intense and far-ranging structural change. In this division, a deed or occurrence may be a change which operates under the radar of the structuring ideology and as such may exist in structural contradiction to that ideology, without posing a threat. A non-profit community group could be an example here; their activities maybe in contradiction to capitalism, but their scale is such that little movement is detected. In contrast, a singularity is structurally located in a position that positing more of a threat to the central ideological fantasy. Some elements of climate change discourse are an example of a singularity.

Additionally Badiou divides singularity into 'weak singularity' as a dormant singularity which does not produce change. This (symptomatic) element does not cause radical transformation, but retains the possibility of doing so. Opposed to weak singularity is event, whose consequences are maximal; an event changes the co-ordinates of being (p.3-4). The difference between these elements is one of a minimal difference. The difference does not lie in content, but rather form; at any stage an element can move from a deed to an event, depending on its relationship with the hegemonic universal ideology. Again, climate change is the paradigmatic example. Initially, climate change was little more than an occurrence, a symptom at the margins of capitalist ideology. Recently though, it has produced far greater anxiety, suggesting that it had moved to becoming a site of singularity with the possibility of provoking an event. Such has been the effect of capital, however, that climate change has been integrated into the official ideology; it has become a mere modification.

What Badiou desires, both philosophically and politically, is for an element like climate change to become an evental site. Badiou defines an evental site as;

“an entirely abnormal multiple, that is, a multiple such that none of its elements are presented in the situation. The site, itself, is presented, but 'beneath' it nothing from which it is composed is presented. As such, the site is not part of the situation. I will also say of such a multiple that it is on the edge of the void..." (Badiou, 2005, p.175).

He adds;

“It becomes clearer why an evental site can be said to be one the edge of the void when we remember that from the perspective of the situation this multiple is made up exclusively of non-presented multiples. Just beneath this multiple, if we consider the multiples from which it is composed- there is nothing, because none of its are themselves counted as one. A site is therefore the minimal effect of structure which can be conceived; it is such that it belongs to the situation, whilst what belongs to it in turn does not. The border effect in which this multiple touches upon the void originates in its consistency (its one multiple) being composed solely from what, with respect to the situation, in-consists. Within the situation, this multiple is, but that of which it is the multiple is not" (p.175)

Thus, an event raises what had been previously unseen, unknowable within the hegemonic co-ordinates of the order, to a position of power (Johnston, 2007, p.20). This position of power is not an initially constructive force, rather it forces a re-scrabble of the ideological matrix; that which has been excluded holds no greater truth than what already existed. Rather, its presence unveils the gap between what Zizek labels the abstract universal imaginary (the existing ideology) and its necessary exclusion- the concrete universal. The eruption of this gap, the materialist Truth of these circumstances, causes us to reconsider the manner in which we previously held the axiomatic truths which found our society. Thus, although Truth causes a radical reconsideration of what is, the positive form of the excluded truth- the concrete universal- holds no more Truth in itself than the abstract universal. As Zizek states; "one should be clear here in rejecting the dangerous motto "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" which leads us to discover "progressive" anti-imperialist potential in fundamentalist Islamist movements" (Zizek, 2007, p.3).Perhaps the key point is that the gap/void between is not just nothingness, there is a philosophical and political importance to what is on the edge of void and that which reveals the void; the concrete universal (p.21).

As can be seen, Badiou’s focus is on the possibility of change and the various forms of non-identity (established as a minimal difference in form) that operate within being. In doing so, however, Badiou stands accused of insufficiently focusing on the relationship between being/modification and site/event. Whilst similarly orientated theorists such as Zizek place much of their emphasis on ideological critique, Badiou remains focused on the event in itself. The focus on events (with its associated dismissal of knowledge) leads some to charge Badiou of depoliticising politics. Additionally, some, such as Levi Bryant (Bryant, 2007), suggest that Badiou does not pay enough attention to the structure of situations and the manner in which human ‘animals’ are attached to them. His focus is predominately events/truth-procedures as opposed to why human’s seldom recognise these elements/events. Essentially, Bryant is argues that Badiou has placed too little emphasis on knowledge/multiplicity and too much on the event, thus underplaying the attachment subjects have to the situations to which they belong.

Such an analysis is based on the Lacanian conception of the subject. The Lacanian subject, whilst structured around a lack, a fundamental negativity, is also characterised by an excess, a ‘want-to-be’. As Bryant states;“From the moment that the signifier appears it becomes possible to refer to the thing in the absence of that thing. Thus the signifier imbues the thing with absence, with its own death, with the possibility of its own non-being”(p.16). Thus, one has to consider as part of a signifier its own absence- the signifier differs not only from another signifier, but from itself.

Because the signifier (which represents the subject) cannot signify itself, it perpetually requires another signifier to signify it; we always desire another signifier which we believe to be the ‘final’ signifier . The logic of the signifier produces a lack of closure which acts as a positive condition for the subject. The lack in the symbolic produces an excessive over-determinism such that subject (according to Zizek, as opposed to Badiou[1]) has the capacity to formulate their own desire.

Desire, the ‘want-to-be’ which characterises the subject, prevents events from readily occurring. An event would reveal the constitutive lack in the Other which would prevent the discovery of the final signifier, thus as Bryant states;

"Consequently, there is a tendency within the subject to attribute substantiality and completeness to the Other- even when faced with vast bodies of evidence to the contrary, as an article of faith that the final signifier does exist…when faced with evidence to the contrary, the analysand does not revise or discard these beliefs, but instead holds all the more vigorously to his beliefs " (p18-19).

As a consequence of the desire for a final signifier, and the fantasy which supports desire, the subject/system has little interest in an exposure to Truth or an event. We must therefore ask under what conditions a subject/system may be open to an event and what kind of political intervention could produce these circumstances.

Traditional continental thought has tended to focus on the ideological structuration of the subject. Within Badiou’s work, however, the discussion of these mechanisms is generally unsatisfactory. As Bryant contends, for Badiou; “the world of language, ideology, power and custom is little more than simple opinion, standing in stark contrast to truth” (Bryant, 2007, p.5). Yet, despite this easy dismissal, the realm of opinion and axiomatic truth operates as the ideological adhesive of being. It is opinion, where the subject believes they are committed to truth (and the associated perfomative affect) that prevents the subject from entering into Badiou’s truth procedure and causing an event.

Badiou himself is not ignorant of this affect. Bryant (p.10-11) states that, for Badiou, situations are always doubly structured through presentation and representation. That is, elements both exist and structurally exist; they are not mutually exclusive in terms of their division into sets. We see this affect with the structuration of climate change discourse; climate change concern can range from the ‘eco-chic’ which features in everything from woman’s’ fashion magazines to eco-Marxism discourse.

Badiou also contends that every situation has a meta-structure/state of the situation that is responsible for ‘counting’ elements within a situation. Essentially the meta-structure creates the ideological conditions of universality. Badiou states;

“The void, which is the name of inconsistency in the situation (under the law of the count-as-one) cannot, in itself, be presented or fixed...it is necessary to prohibit that catastrophe of presentation which would be its encounter with its own void, the presentational occurrence of inconsistency as such, or the ruin of the One...In order for the void to be prohibited from presentation, it is necessary that structure be structured, that the ‘there is Oneness,’ be valid for the count-as-one. The consistence of presentation thus requires that all structure be doubled by a metastructure which secures the former against any fixation of the void” (Badiou, 2005, p.93-94).

Given the apparent structuring of the social, it appears that any political method that seeks change must aim at destabilising the mechanisms which all suturing the social. An intervention which rests its hope on an event occurring in itself appears to be politically optimistic, if not simply naive. In Zizek’s terms, what is required for an event/act to occur is a traversal of ideological fantasy, a process which requires an ideological critique.

In The Sublime Object of Ideology, Zizek presents an ethics that aims at loosening the hold of the symbolic. Here he states;

“we must not obliterate the distance separating the Real from its symbolisation: it is this surplus of the Real over every symbolisation that functions as the object-cause of desire. To come to terms with this surplus (or more precisely, leftover) means to acknowledge a fundamental deadlock (‘antagonism’), a kernel resisting symbolic integration-dissolution” (Zizek, 1989, p.3)

Politically, we must resist desire to suture that which is on the edge of the void, to create yet another positivisation that would cover over and hide the fundamental antagonism within the social (Bryant, 2007,p.21). Badiou himself suggests something similar in his notion of subtractive politics. Badiou contrasts his subtractive politics with the 20th century passion for the real; a modernist desire to strip away illusionary narratives to find the hard kernel ‘x’ beyond narrative. This passion involves an attempt to short-circuit the relationship between the ideal and the real; what is real becomes the ideal. This modernist desire brought with it a politics of destruction (Johnston, 2007, p.15-16).

Badiou revokes the politics of destruction with his formulation of the politics of subtraction. Subtractive politics attempts to examine and utilise the fundamentally negative ontology of the social. This is a move from positive to negative politics. Badiou suggests that this subtractive path involves examining the real not as that which is behind reality, but rather as the minimal difference within reality itself (Johnston, 2007, p.16).

Zizek also evokes the pertinence of the Deleuzian term "minimal difference" –a miniscule (formal) difference that separates an element as a contingent (or rather, externally caused) crisis point within statist ideology, or that very same point as a symptom of the repressed Truth of the state (Zizek, 2007, p.5). This is the art of politics of 'minimal difference';" to be able to employ a parallax view which enables the political analyst to discover which elements have to potential to come loose from ideology, producing an ontological anxiety of truth, caused by the unmediated presence of Truth.

In order to employ such a parallax perspective as a tool of the politics of minimal difference, an ideological critique needs to be performed. Zizek states that the aim of such a critique is not to reveal something new to the reader, but rather something disturbing about what they already knew (Zizek, 2006). This kind of analysis is not readily available within Badiou’s work. Although Badiou utilises the notion of minimal difference in the idea that elements are always doubly inscribed, both presented and represented, the focus is much more on event then the stabilising role of ideology in holding movement to modifications as opposed to singularity and event.

The mistake, as Johnston notes, is that because of the grip of ideological fantasy, one can not readily see the possibility of an event without ideological critique; an event will not just appear, it will always be ‘doubly inscribed’ in ideology. As such, any political intervention that aims at producing an event must also engage in an ideological intervention through a through interpretation of the structure of the situation, including the economies of jouissance in operation. As such, Bryant suggests that;

"rather than looking to Zizek's various texts for a theory of practice or what we should do, we should instead read these texts themselves as a form of practice. That is, we should not ask whether Zizek's interpretations are true or false, but should instead ask what these interpretations do" (Bryant, 2007, p.22).


Zizek himself suggests that the primary task of emancipatory analysis is to reject the represented ideological dualism of axiomatic ‘truths’ and falsity and bring in the third term which maintains this division (Zizek, 2007, p.3);

“The hegemonic ideological field imposes on us a field of ideological visibility with its own principal contradiction (today that opposition is market-freedom-democracy vs. fundamentalist-terrorist-totalitarianism-Islamofascism etc), and the first thing to do is to reject (subtract) from this opposition to perceive it as a false opposition destined to obfuscate the true line of division...The basic operation of hegemonic ideology is to enforce a false point, to oppose a false choice" (p.3)

As Adrian Johnston contends;
“No critical theoretical analysis of ideology is immune from the threat of being appropriated by ideologically duplicitous rationalisations of quietism... not only is it possible to lie in the guise of truth- any truth can be twisted into a tool for engendering an acceptance of the status quo”.

Thus, while there is no fail-safe method for destabilising ideology in the name of change, to have change we must focus on existing stability. That is, given the negative ontological structure of the social, the prospect of change is always a possibility. Yet, through ideological fantasy, this prospect rarely eventuates. In order to thing change of the scale which Badiou seeks, a more focused critique of existing ideology is required. Optimally, this critique will take the form of a parallax view, opening up the space of minimal difference within the social and exposing the possibility of an event. Any political position, such as Badiou’s, which places its main emphasis on event as the expense of ideology is, in my opinion, short-sighted. Yet, this is not to dismiss Badiou’s work. Ontologically, his position is very Lacanian and his concepts of modification and site appear productive. Yet, because of the previously mentioned over-emphasis on change at the expense of stability, it appears that something is missing in his work that may be available in Zizek.






Badiou, A. (2005). Being and Event (O. Feltham, Trans.). London: Continuum.
Bryant, L. R. (2007). Symptomal Knots and Evental Ruptures: Zizek, Badiou, and Discerning the Indiscernible. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 1(1).
Johnston, A. (2007). The Quick and the Dead: Alain Badiou and the Split Speeds of Transformation. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 1(2).
Zizek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.


[1] For Badiou the subject only emerges through an event

Wealth and Poverty

This week I have been investigating some capitalist 'solutions' to economic development and poverty. Within these 'revisionist' approaches to development, there are three predominant postulated responses to poverty;
- The non-opposed exterior (Those 'passively' in poverty);
- The antagonistic exterior ( Socialism);
- The antagonistic interior (World Bank's perspective of the IMF).

Capitalism is considered to be the only possible economic system. Formalist logic suggests that capitalism has been more successful at producing economic growth than any other alternative, therefore capitalism= wealth. Under this ideology, poverty exists because of a lack of capitalism.

Paradoxically, a parallax is produced between wealth (as identity, abstract universal) and poverty (non-identity, concrete universal). No relationship is conceived between the production of wealth and the production of poverty. Nonetheless, the gap between the two is reproduced as a possible object; that poverty can be eliminated by becoming wealth.

Capitalist development ideology suggests that for poverty to be eliminated capitalism must be globalised and the conditions of capitalisation reproduced in this non-opposed exterior. No possibility is given to an incommensurability between wealth and poverty. This is the true parallax (poverty as the disavowed foundation of wealth) and the aim of psychoanalytic ideological critique; not to reveal something new, but a disturbing underside to what is already known.

Nonetheless, texts which take poverty seriously cannot deny its continued existence, despite the rapid globalisation of capitalism. Cause must be found. It is located in two areas of anterior, either exterior or interior. Both forms of antagonism are credited with causing, either initially or contemporarily, the existence of poverty. We shall first deal with the former.

Exterior antagonism is what would be dialectically considered a constitutive outside; an exterior which affirms interior identity. Within the operation of formalist ideology exterior antagonisms work in much the same manner, giving cause to that which is excessive to identity. There are numerous modalities of exterior antagonisms. Three forms are predominant within capitalist development discourse; natural/historical, internal and external.

External exterior antagonisms are elements that are discursively presented as the cause of poverty, which are exterior to capitalist identity, but also external to the victims of poverty. Marxist ideology, as an illustration, is posited as a external exterior antagonism, enforced onto those in poverty.In contrast, an internal exterior antagonism is a cause of poverty (exterior to capitalism) which has been produced by those in poverty e.g. poor work ethic or corrupt governance.

Natural/historical antagonisms are perhaps the most powerful explanatory force in that they are perceived to be beyond politics. Jared Diamond's text 'Guns, Germs and Steel' is an element of this modality of discourse. Here, Diamond suggests that global distribution of wealth has been caused by various historical/geographical factors. This sort of antagonism removes the political tension from the discourse. Poverty then becomes a matter of the super-ego; a paternal responsibility.

The final salient factor in development discourse is interior antagonisms. Interior antagonisms are discourses that battle for the hegemonic space within the empty signifier 'development'. A prime example is Joseph Stiglitz's 'Globalisation's and its discontents'. Here Stiglitz's attributes the continued existence of poverty to poor policies by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as opposed to Stiglitz's World Bank.

The collective effect of these antagonisms is to give contingent cause to poverty. This is the role of ideology; to reproduce the gap between symptom and abstract universality in a more palpable manner. The role of ideological critique than becomes not to uncover something new, but the disturbing hidden underside of what is already known. In my next piece I will investigate the work of leftist/anti-capitalists’ on the relationship between poverty and wealth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Capital the Real?

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

“According to Zizek, capitalism is the Real of present-day societies for it is that which always returns. Now he knows as well as I do what the Lacanian Real is; so he should also be aware that Capitalism cannot be the Lacanian Real. The Lacanian Real is that which resists symbolisation and shows itself only through its disruptive effects. But capitalism as a set of institutions, practices, and so on can operate only in so far as it is part of the symbolic order. And if, on top of that one thinks- as Zizek does- that capitalism is a self-generated framework proceeding out of an elementary conceptual matrix, it has to be-conceptually- fully graspable and, as a result, a symbolic totality without holes. In that case, capitalism as such is dislocated by the Real, and it is open to contingent hegemonic retotalisations. Ergo, it cannot be the fundamentum inconcussum, the framework within which hegemonic struggles take place, because- as a totality- it is itself only the result of partial hegemonic stabilisations”[ii]

These two quotes conceptualise perhaps the fundamental point of disagreement amongst those seeking to combine some degree of Psychoanalytic and Marxist theory in order to produce an anti-capitalist intervention. Zizek argues that capital is the Real and thus it has no outside. In contrast, Laclau contends that Capitalism is a hegemonic symbolic system like any other; as a form of the symbolic it has various holes and boundaries. The implications of this debate define the potential form of political intervention. Because Zizek rejects the potential for an outside from which to create an alternative positivisation to capital, Zizek’s politics takes the form of destructive radical ‘Acts’. In contrast, Laclau and likeminded Theorists such as Jason Glynos, Glyn Daly and Mark Devenney insist on the validity of ‘politics of contingency’, that is, to deconstruct the hegemony of capital, revealing its contingency and reconstructing alternative symbolic forms.

The truth, perhaps, lies between these two positions based on a more nuanced definition of the Real than that which Laclau sites. The question then, is if Capital is the Real as Zizek suggests, in what sense this can be correct. Some theorists, such as Scott Stephens and Rex Butler appear to have taken Zizek at his word, constructing Capital as the Real in a strict Lacanian sense in attempting to ‘think Capital theologically’. Such a position can easily be dismissed. Instead, a debate with such consequences deserves a more thorough and concrete analysis. Firstly, we must ask in what sense Zizek constructs capital as the Real. Such a construction relies on Zizek advanced development of the modalities of the Real in For They Know Not What They Do. Most saliently, Zizek consider Capital as the symbolic Real in the sense that it has hegemonised the very basis for the development of hegemony. In this paper, through an analysis of the operation of global capital we find that capital whilst not the Real in a strict Lacanian sense, can be considered a symbolic form of the Real, as long as both parts of the term (symbolic and Real) are given equal weight. That is, whilst there may be an outside to the structural logic of global capital, this outside is constructed only in terms of Capital. Thus Capital is Real in the sense that it is the point to which all symbolisation must return (it determines in the last instance?), but symbolic in that this dominance is never complete; there exists holes within Capital that offer opportunities for radical transformation. This paper therefore argues that by considering global capital as symbolic/Real (or perhaps a symbolic form of the Real) greater possibilities for political intervention open up then exist via the politics of contingency.

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

Zizek’s definition of Capital as a symbolic form of the Real owes to his distinction (in the foreword to the 2nd edition of For they Know Not What They Do, written in 2002) between the triadic modalities of the Real. In response to his own criticism of his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), that he endorsed a ‘quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan’ and the Real. That is, Zizek claims that he constructed the Real as a point of failure with the consequence that what is ethical is to except failure. Instead, Zizek wants to construct the Real not only as symbolic failure, but also as a positive point of excess. In order to do this, Zizek claims that the triadic Lacanian matrix Real-Imaginary-Symbolic is reproduced within itself. That is, we can have an Imaginary form of the Real and as well as a Symbolic form of the Imaginary. Of most interest to this argument is the Symbolic Real, which Zizek describes as ‘the Real as consistency’[v]. Zizek had previously presented this argument in Contingency, Hegemony and Universality, where he describes Capital as ‘structuring in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for Hegemony’[vi]. Zizek is clear, however, to make a distinction between Capital as a limit to signification and hegemonic struggle and Capital as the positive condition that creates a background against which hegemonic struggle occurs.[vii]
This last point is vital. It is not that Capital prevents the production of non-capitalist discourse, but rather that these discourses occur on a background (if a somewhat passive one) that determines the parameters in which it operates. Therefore, it can appear that an outside to Capital exists. Clearly not all relations are capitalist relations. However, this outside is not an outside that is an alternative to capitalism. Before developing this point any further, it is important to consider more carefully the logic of capitalism. Such a consideration will allow us to understand the manner in which Capital is the symbolic Real and how this relates to the relations between exterior and interior within Capital.

Within the overall system of reproduction of Capital, we can define the operation of two separate logics that maintain the hegemonic hegemony of Capital. The first operates through the logic of desire and the operation of ideology. It produces a transcendental illusion, integrating all challenges to capital within its symbolic boundary. The second operates in complementary contrast to this logic and can be considered under Laclau’s label of a constitutive outside. Here threats that cannot be successfully integrated into the operation of Capital as re-presented as a threat to that order. A threat that acts to define the identity of the interior systematic operation of Capital. We shall deal with the former logic first before returning to the notion of the constitutive outside.

Capitalism is based on a paradoxical logic where its own failures provide the fuel for its continued expansion. This paradoxical logic is the logic of desire. Desire is ultimately impossible to satisfy; the more one has the more one wants. Capitalism is based, in terms of both consumption and production upon this logic. Such a process means that capitalism is destined to expand until it implodes. As we shall see, any discourse that seeks to slow the capitalist rate of production is ultimately impotent.

This feature of capitalism has consequences that are more radical when we consider its affect on the long-term stability of the system. Any negative excess to capitalism – the symptom- can be re-integrated back into the system. This integration occurs through ideological fantasy, which operates to create the illusion of wholeness; the transcendental illusion. In the transcendental illusion, ideology performs the impression that something exists (instead of nothing) between two objects. The objects to which we refer here are the abstract universal and the symptom. Desire, which acts to produce this illusion through ideology integrates the symptom (which as an epiphenomenon of the concrete universal has an incommensurable relationship with the abstract universal) back into the system. The effect is that symptoms of capital, which are ultimately threats to the system, are taken up into capital. Environmentalism is an example of this process par excellence. Initially, environmental thought, in its various forms (deep Green, ecology etc) posed a strong threat to capitalism. Now, however, environmentalism is just another market from which to produce profit. This kind of analysis suggests that capitalist structural logic is all-consuming; there is no outside to capital. However, further analysis of Green ideology shows that this is not the case and leads us to our next point, that of the constitutive outside.

A discourse that has been positioned as a ‘constitutive outside’ can also be a symptoms of the current order, as in our Green ideology example, or it can be genuine (as opposed to dialectical) opposite, such as Islamic Fundamentalism. Whatever the case, the manner in which a constitutive outside is re-presented is the opposite of the transcendental illusion. Here, instead of producing the illusion that two objects are linked, a parallax occurs, presenting the objects as incommensurable. This may well be empirically correct (say with opposing religions) or it may be a discursive representation, but the effect is the same. By excluding a discursive position and presenting it as a threat the identity of the inside is affirmed. Following on with the Green ideology example, where many forms of this ideology are included within capitalism, those that cannot (because they pose a threat to capitalism, such as a radical Green critique of the consumption process) are excluded and produced as a threat. As such, they are a necessary outside to the system and are part of the dominant edifice.

We can see this operation (producing a symptom as an outside, a threat) in the recent gun Massacre at Virginia Tech. Despite the killer’s videotaped ‘confession threats’ attempting to portray himself as a symptom of the American college system, mass media outlets where quick to depict the shooter as an outsider, an exception in the conventional sense of the word. Terms such as ‘alien’ and ‘evil’ were often used. Likewise, the recent gang shooting in Wanganui has been represented in a similar fashion. Gangs are not constructed as in any way a product of the current order, but rather an unruly and threatening exterior. In doing so though, Gang violence reinforces the ‘civility’ of the hegemonic order.

The dual process- of integration and exclusion reveals that while elements can appear outside capitalism, it is capitalism that sets the terms for the symbolic order. Perhaps before discussing this point further in terms of the status of Capital as the Real and the opportunities this presents for political action, it is worth clarifying two exceptions to capitalism with no outside. One of these exceptions proves the rule, the other, as we shall see, offers the potential to break it. The former refers to areas which are non-capitalist, but do not pose any kind of threat to capitalism. Here I am referring to activities and discourses such as community based sport or even simpler activities such as conversations between individuals. These are not determined by capital in any strict sense. These areas are affected by capitalism, but do not affect it. They are effectively able to go on unchallenged because they do not threaten capitalism. Non-capitalism, therefore is not able to be used a springboard for an anti-capitalist movement, because if it establishes itself at a level of threat that threatens capitalism then it enters the realm of the logics aforementioned. Capitalism, in a Marxist interpretation, is determining in the last instance.

The second exception leads us into the climax of our argumentation, that being the opportunities presented by capitalism as the symbolic Real. This exception comes specifically from the symbolic status of capital as a modality of the Real. The symbolic, as Laclau points out in the quote that opened this essay, is full of kinks and holes. Capital as the symbolic Real is no exception. The important factor here is what has to be excluded for capitalism to continue to operate as it does. For Zizek this factor is class, perhaps better conceptualised as the concrete universal and constitutive exception (as opposed to constitutive outside). The concrete universal exists as necessary exclusion that allows the whole to operate. In capitalism, Zizek suggests that this factor is the proletariat, those we are required to use their bodies to produce while others consume the fruits of their labour.

As I have suggested, the symptom(s) of the concrete universal are dealt with either by including them within capitalism (e.g. environmentalism) or presenting them as an outside threat. However, the concrete universal remains as a necessary failure, a kink in the order of the Symbolic Real. Thus, while the status of Capital as the symbolic Real removes the possibility for creating an alternative positivisation to battle capitalism, it does not eliminate the possibility of a negatively charged ‘ethical’ critique. This possibility again brings us back to the differences between the Zizekian and Laclauian positions. If what is required is an ethical critique, deconstructing capitalism and revealing it as a hegemonic, yet ultimately contingent order, then what is the different between the two theorists? Is the status of Capital relative to Real simply an isolated question of epistemology? Perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, it is important to consider exactly what contingent and ethical critiques are. In doing so, we shall find that they are very different political forms, a difference resulting from Capital as a modality of the Real.

A ‘contingent’ critique (not a contingent form of critique, although this is debatable, but rather a critique which reveals the contingency of the hegemonic order) seeks to deconstruct the symbolic, the reveal the nature of its construct and show how it could have been otherwise. An ethical critique (in the psychoanalytic sense) takes on the opposite task in seeking to unveil the stability of the system via its necessary exclusions. In doing so, it is hoped to destabilise that which has repressed the presence of the concrete universal. The distinction between the two forms of critique, in terms of interventions into capitalism, is that the former cannot adequately come to grips with the inherent, jouissantic, stability of capitalism. In particular, contingency-based critiques fail because capitalism is already a contingent form of symbolic structure; nothing radical can come by producing capitalism as a contingent edifice.

What are the main problems with this draft (other than a lack of a conclusion and the general incoherent writing)?
- Thinking capital telelogically- who are the agents of capital
- Need more stringent (Lacanian) definitions of the Real
- A few points need to be better supported, with expanded examples. In particular I have named a number of theorised without touching on or referencing their work.
- Need to further construct the different between contingent and ethical critique
- Further investigation and support for the discussion on the logics of capitalism, in particular its relationship to the concrete universal (proletariat?)

[i] Zizek, 2000, p.223
[ii] Laclau, 2000,p.291
[iii] Zizek, 1999, p.4
[iv] See Butler, Laclau and Zizek, 2000, p.223 and p.319.
[v] Zizek, 2002, p.xii
[vi] Zizek, 2000, p.320
[vii] Zizek, 2000, p.319

Psychoanalysis; Comedy or Tragedy?

While in the middle of a psychoanalytically inspired rant the other day, I was accused of political pessimism. Psychoanalytic political theory (at least of the Zizekian variety) with its emphasis on ontological negativity is easily accused of this fault. Certainly psychoanalysis places more emphasis on negativity and its resulting effects than more traditional political ideologies, such as liberalism or conservatism. But emphasising the negative is not naturally pessimistic. Rather it can open up the possibility of much more radical results. Perhaps the difference is analogous to that between comedy and tragedy. Is it tragic that we will never find ‘it’, or rather is the joke that it was never to be lost?

Many political theorists consider psychoanalysis to be a tragic discourse; focusing on negative ontology can only lead to conservative politics. Conservative in the sense that society can never find what it is missing. It is destined to remain incomplete, with all the connotations of exclusions, violence and injustice. Indeed there is congruence between conservative and psychoanalytic thought because both consider social exclusions to be a natural occurrence. The critical difference is that where conservative thought considers these exclusions ‘natural’ and therefore fixed, radical thought always holds open the possibility of structural change, of reconfiguring socially produced symptoms. It is therefore the comedic and radical side of psychoanalysis which provides the best response to the allegation of pessimism. Comedic, in the sense that that which we have supposed to have lost was never ours to lose. Radical, because the comedic ontological interpretation opens up the possibility of change beyond reform, beyond conservatism and ultimately, ‘conservative’ liberalism.

I say conservative liberalism, because in the end it is liberalism that cannot envisage the possibility of a radically better world. Liberal ideology is shaken by the presence of exclusions; the exclusions operate as a point of anxiety. The inclusion of these points of anxiety becomes the key to justice within liberalism. Liberal ideology therefore becomes an ultimately futile process of inclusion. This process matches that of the logic of desire; one can never have enough. Perhaps this explains the synergetic association between liberalism and capitalism, but working on the infinite logic of desire. The tragedy with liberal-capitalism is that it will never find what it is looking for, but will create all kinds of carnage on the way- just ask the Third World.

By contrast, radical (psychoanalytic) thought has more in common with the logic of drive and comedy. Jouissance is not received by obtaining an object that will fill lack (or the fantasy of this process), but rather through a circulation of this lack. Drive, in this sense, has much in common with comedy, in that both acknowledge the ultimate failure of the social, not in the sense that we will never find fulfilment, but that we never had it in the first place. By acknowledging primal lack, the possibility of radical structural change is reopened.

Radical thought may appear pessimistic in the face of the liberal order- it denies the satisfaction of desire- but this negativity pushes past the boundaries of the current order to the possibility of a better one. That is why I would rather be a radical pessimism than a liberal optimism.

Phd, 2007; The Beginning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

Disrupting Capitalism

There is no symbolic space outside of global capital; an alternative to capital is impossible. Paradoxically, herein lays the precise possibility for moving beyond capital. From within the current hegemonic boundaries of capitalism, there is simply no prospect of an end to capitalism - those who practice ‘Third-Way’ politics are correct, there is no alternative. Capitalism has an all-pervasive grip upon the power centres of the world. The jouissance produced through the abstract universal imaginaries of capital and the various modalities of ideological fantasy that provide its unconscious supplement are too compelling. Although most of the capitalist world is aware of the potential threats to capital, particularly climate change and global poverty, these symptoms are easily disavowed; such is the effectiveness of capital in domesticating the threat posed by its symptoms. Nonetheless, through dialectical logic, specifically the dialectical materialist methodology suggested in this thesis, the potential strategies for disturbing the impossible grip of capitalism become apparent. The greatest potential lies in the very impossibility of moving beyond capitalism.

This impossibility is best understood through Žižek’s notion of the parallax view. It highlights the disruptive potential(s) of the concrete universal and of the Real within the totality that is capitalism. Again, no ‘beyond’ exits to capitalism, only the possibility of rupture within.

The potential for, and apparent impossibility of, moving beyond global capital is illustrated in the relationship that exists between the two areas of discourse that have been analysed in the previous two chapters, Green ideology and discourses on global poverty (developmentalism). These two areas represent the major areas of discursive investment for the political Left. They are, however, incommensurable forms of engagement with global capitalism; they form a political parallax centred around a social antagonism that is caused by global capital. It appears that the Left can either speak of environmentalism, of reducing pollution and carbon production, or global development– increasing the collective wealth of humanity – but not both positions at the same time. Those who focus on the goal of reducing poverty argue for increased levels of consumption and greater production. On the other side of the parallax, environmentalists and ecologists demand that limits be placed upon development. Such a limit radically interferes with the goal of eliminating poverty. The gap between these elements is sutured under the empty signifier ‘Left’, which supports the Kantian transcendental illusion that something exists between the two perspectives. However, as Kant’s notion of the illusion makes clear, no such position exists, only the presence of absence. This gap – the parallax Real – occurs because of a fundamental antagonism that exists between the two, caused by global capital in its manifestation as the symbolic Real. Only with the dissipation of capitalism can this parallax be dissolved, not with the suturing of the gap between the two (which is the current strategy for much of the political Left). In contrast, rather than attempting to provide a suturing-point for this impossibility, this thesis argues that the more productive political approach is instead to focus on the impossibility that is inherent to this parallax and also on the parallax of ontological difference that sits between the abstract and concrete universals of global capitalism. This position can be achieved by attempting to think both perspectives – and the gap – at once, through the dialectical concept of totality. In doing so, a psychoanalytic approach is not only able to reveal the contingency of capitalist social constructions of the abstract universal (of the social Good), but more importantly the capitalism’s disavowed materialist core , its concrete universal.


The methodology created in this thesis grounds Žižek’s abstract philosophical position. As its application to the two areas of discourse demonstrates, possibilities exist for disrupting the existing hegemonic matrix of global capital by evoking capitalism’s concrete universal, by ‘practicing’ the concrete universal as Žižek puts it.


Practicing Concrete Universality

A first possible means for practicing concrete universality comes by focusing on what I term ‘discourses of the concrete universal’. These discourses perhaps provide the greatest potential for producing a radical structural shift within/to capital. Discourses of the concrete universal are those discourses which lie outside of the abstract universal horizon that the idea of ‘global capitalism’ represents. In this sense, they are discourses of the Real, possessing no means for translating between the twin poles of the ontological parallax. Any movement of the concrete universal into the realm of the hegemonic imaginary will produce some degree of dislocation because of the ultimate incommensurability between the elements involved. The concrete universal, as both the excess which is generated by the abstract universal and the material substance upon which that universal horizon is constituted, cannot be translated into the terms of that horizon without a dislocation occurring to that same horizon, that is, to the idea of global capitalism.

We see this at work in the area of climate change. Although climate change is not simply a discursive construction, it still appears within the broad horizon of global capitalism as a discursive element, as the concrete universal of capitalism; it appears as ‘an effect of nature’, as ‘the natural’. This dislocates the universal capitalist imaginary. This process is currently occurring in relation to climate change. Reports continue to surface regarding the incommensurability between the capitalist economic system and the limits of the environment (PCE, 2005; Stern, 2006). Although symbolic resources currently exist to domesticate this symptom, such as through increased or targeted taxes, a dislocation of some degree is likely to occur if the concrete universal were to continue to assert pressure. Similarly, this might be possible if a unity could be formed between the peoples of the Third World, perhaps under a signifier such as ‘Majority World’. This unity could allow a position of concrete universality to emerge, evoking a degree of dislocation, providing that the fantasmatic resources which support the hegemony are unable to domesticate the symptoms. This proviso, however, perhaps underpins the prospects for both social change and stability.

Discourses of the concrete universal also identify the manner in which fantasy and jouissance sustain universal horizons over and above the words through which those horizons are symbolised. That is to say, subjects are enabled to identify with particular images of the universal because they enjoy the experience of doing so, such experiences grip them. The loosening of this grip does not occur simply though the production of rational arguments that reveal the irrationality of the universal horizon (such that the global production of wealth relies upon the exploitation of localised groups), but rather the provocation of experiences of abjection, such as anxiety and trauma. These occur to the subject through their exposure to the Real.

Anxiety and trauma occur when the concrete universal impacts upon the universal horizon, such as when one comes into face-to-face contact with extreme poverty, perhaps by bumping into a homeless person on a city street. This is what offers the prospect for change, as the subject seeks to find an alternative, more bearable discourse that can domesticate the unsettling effects of the Real.

An alternative field of discourse to that of ‘the concrete universal’ which can be mobilised to interrupt a structural formation, I have termed ‘discourses of the symptom’. This very thesis is itself such a discourse. These discourses use the terms that have been set by an abstract universal, such as capitalism or multiculturalism. Notwithstanding their location within abstract universals, discourses of the symptom are able to view in a dialectical manner both the abstract universal which frames them and their constitutive exception.

When viewed from the perspective of this form of discourse, the constitutive exception emerges as ’the symptom’ to the abstract universal. More specifically, the symptom refers to the disruptive impact which the concrete universal has upon the universal imaginary by virtue of its own location within that imaginary. To rephrase the point, discourses of the symptom reveal the limit point of the universal, the point of its failure.

Such a point is the Truth of the universal. This is not a meta-physical Truth which remains the same in all possible symbolisations. Rather it is the embodiment of Truth in a particular content. The core to a Žižekian-inspired political analysis is not to expose the contingency of a hegemonic social construction (although this is a useful political strategy) but rather to reveal the Truth as the central element of the universal totality. The Truth of any construction, its concrete universal, is not purely contingent, but rather the hard material core to that construction; this is the point which paradoxically holds together the abstract universal yet remains its constitutive exception.

That is, a Zizekian-styled political approach does not seek to deconstruct a contingent political position so that it can be reformulated in a more progressive manner, but rather to reveal the point against which all political constructions are combating, the concrete universal. Here, we are not talking about an ahistorical lack or Real against which all symbolisations battle, but rather a historical lack, R2, or the symbolic Real; in our times, that symbolic Real is, global capital.

Thus, in a mutually constituting manner, the form that Truth takes is always particular to its content and the particular content that is involved in this takes on a form that enables it to play a universalising role. Thereby, a symptom can embody the Truth of a particular edifice because it represents a universal form (that being the point of failure of the hegemonic imaginary) and the universal form only takes shape through the particular content in which it occurs (Brockelman, 2003, p.196). Discourses of the symptom reveal this point of Truth not by embodying the concrete universal, but rather, as Žižek states, by confronting a universal horizon with its ‘unbearable example’ (Zizek, 2006a, p.13), that is, by practicing concrete universality.

Discourses of the concrete universal, reviewed above, provide the more powerful force of the two kinds of discourse in terms of inducing radical political change. That said, discourses of the symptom supply a more viable kind of political strategy given that they operate from a position that is fully within the universal edifice. For those seeking to produce social change, the concrete universal – like the brute fact of climate change – forever remains outside of their control. Thus, as political strategies, neither the increasing degradation of the environment nor the unity of the disavowed ‘Majority World’ population can be relied upon for dislocating capitalism. Neither is under political influence. This is not to suggest that in another context discourses of the concrete universal should be ignored. Indeed, perhaps the most efficient strategy is a combination of the two.

The act of identifying with the symptom, of practicing concrete universality, opens up a space for the concrete universal itself to operate, for it to emerge as the unbearable example of the abstract universalising horizon. The method which has been created in this thesis is a grounded reflection of this abstracted strategy. By revealing the deadlock that is inherent to capital, its incommensurability within itself as a totality, one can practice concrete universality through a ‘short-circuit analysis’. It is this strategy which reveals the political potential of psychoanalysis. This thesis, as a short-circuit analysis – a discourse of the symptom – has the role of thinking both sides of the parallax at once. By doing so through the dialectical notion of totality, we see that the methodology suggested in this thesis offers an alternative strategy for anti-capitalist engagement. Specifically, rather than having to choose between alternative conceptions of capitalism, its abstract and concrete forms, dialectical logic allows an analyst the ability to think both options at once (for example, that global capital brings both great wealth and extreme poverty, that capitalist societies can become increasingly energy efficient yet be destroying the climate at the same time). This Žižekian style of analysis allows the symptoms of capital to be seen not as contingent failures but, rather, as disavowed elements of capital that constitute its very possibility. This thesis thereby suggests that the most constructive form of anti-capitalist engagement is to reveal the disavowed hard kernel upon which capital is based, but not as an element in itself, but rather as the concrete universal of capitalist totality. It is the ability to think both elements of the parallax at once, to contrast the concrete universal with the hegemonic imaginary, which brings the possibility of dislocation. Contemplation of, and intervention with, the concrete universal alone (of climate change or of poverty) is insufficient.

This conclusion reflects what has increasingly become Žižek’s core position. In an elaboration of this position, Žižek has come to interpret capitalism as a modality of the Real. By this he means that there is nothing outside of capital, it is the point to which all socio-political discourses ultimately return. Therefore, for Žižek, to act is to act only against the background of capital. There is no empty place from which to speak. Here Žižek argues that rather than involve oneself in local politics – to develop bold courses of action that do not threaten the universal edifice despite their apparent radicality – it is better not to act at all (Zizek, 2006b, p.212). These apparently radical transgressions ultimately allow capital to run smoothly, they allow for the construction of a constitutive outside to capitalism, against which the profit motive can pit itself and perhaps subsume. Therefore Žižek reverses Marx’s famous thesis 11, where Marx contends that while philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it. Instead, Žižek suggests:


The first task today is precisely not to succumb to the temptation to act, to intervene directly and change things (which then inevitably ends in a cul-de-sac of debilitating impossibility: ‘What can one do against global capital?’), but to question the hegemonic ideological coordinates. (Žižek, 2006b, p. 238)


In its place, Žižek contends that critical analysis must rehabilitate the concept of the universal through a notion of totality in which totality is riven from within, that is, through dialectical analysis. This totality takes in both the abstract and concrete universal of capitalism, vitally allowing access to the gap that is inherent in every symbolic performance, that is, the Real. The key is not to focus exclusively on one side, such as suggesting that capitalism is nothing but poverty nor that capitalism is the best method for producing economic wealth. Neither is it particularly productive to try to find a mediating point, such as an empty signifier, to suture the gap inherent in capitalism, as Laclau suggests. Rather, Žižek asserts, the best position to take in attempting to disrupt capitalism is to think both alternatives at the same time. By taking on both perspectives, the disavowed foundations of capital, as well as the inherent gap within capital, are thus revealed.

Summary

The parallax view, as presented by Žižek, underpins the methodology being suggested by this thesis. This thesis draws upon just two of the modalities of the parallax that Žižek presents: the political and the ontological. An ontological parallax occurs between the abstract and concrete universal within a totality. Here the abstract universal is the hegemonic horizon, it provides the fundamental background against which all other discourses operate. In contrast the concrete universal is the singular exception to this universal horizon.

Conversely, the concrete universal is an exception that is necessary for the constitution of the universal imaginary; absolute poverty, as a concrete universal that sits against the wealth of capitalism, is a salient contemporary example. Therefore, while the concrete universal is an exception to the abstract universal, its singularity bypasses the particular and exceeds the abstract universal horizon. To reiterate this point, the concrete universal, as an exception to the universal imaginary is not simply one element amongst the many that make up that horizon, but rather – despite its status as an exception– it is the very element that constitutes the universal horizon. As such, the concrete universal is necessarily repressed by the hegemonic horizon. This repression returns through the symptom, which reveals the Truth of the abstract universal and the presence of the parallax gap.

The second modality of parallax upon which this thesis draws is the political parallax. Political parallaxes occur between two relatively symmetrical political formations, separated by a social antagonism. This social antagonism creates a condition of incommensurability between the discourses; there is no common language between them. The social antagonism thus reveals the limit point of the discursive formation. This gap is often filled by empty signifiers which offer the prospect of a suture. The impossibility of such a suture, however, is revealed by the emergence of symptoms within the political parallax. Such symptoms occur when the two positions attempt to translate into each other. An example is illustrative here.

As has been noted at the start of this chapter, a strong political parallax is in operation with contemporary capitalism between developmentalism and environmentalism. This occurs in New Zealand politics, particularly within Green discourse. The Green Party is unable to articulate an economic position because its ecological goals are incommensurable with the interests of capital, capital being the social antagonism that gets actualised here. Therefore any attempt at economic policy is fragmented at best, often contradicting its ecological claims; the symptom of this parallax occurs at this point in the discourse (Donald, 2005a, 2005b; Fitzsimons, 2006).

Empty signifiers such as ‘Sustainable Development’, which offer the prospect of a suture of a parallax, are associated with the production of jouissance. Jouissance, as an excess to the Real, is a vital element of Žižek’s rehabilitation of universality; it offers a materialist element to dialectical logic. The abstract universal itself provides subjects the experience of jouissance, of enjoyment, as it offers a possibility of staging a return to an absent state of fullness. These universal horizons are centred around an empty signifier, or the objet a, which have a suturing effect by offering an object for libidinal investment as a substitute for lack. At the same time, because of the impossibility of this suture, the universal horizon requires a certain degree of failure. That failure can not bring about total meltdown – a constitutive failure – as might occur when the concrete universal dislocates a horizon, but rather a displacement of the negativity that is inherent to the symbolic order.

There are two primary modalities of this displacement, external antagonisms and the symptom. External antagonisms are ‘straw enemies’ which are created to stand in for the impossibility of social fullness, of society. Every universal horizon sends out the message that the removal of these antagonisms will restore the lost fullness of society. Of course, this postulated fullness is always only an imaginary creation. Nonetheless, antagonisms are required by the abstract universal and as such they are enjoyed, they are a site of jouissance.

The operation of the symptom, in contrast, is split between its role as an antagonism and the links that exist between symptoms and the concrete universal. Ideological fantasies give the message that symptoms, too, are antagonisms that can be eliminated. Nonetheless, there is a difference between the external antagonisms noted above and symptoms. The former is a fantasmatic creation, whereas symptoms are the Real, material limit-points of universal, hegemonic imaginaries. The symptom carries with it an element of the Real, because it reveals the presence of the concrete universal, which embodies the failure of the universal imaginary. Through ideological fantasy, symptoms are generally represented in a more palpable form than the concrete universal, appearing as external antagonisms that can be removed. However, symptomatic antagonisms always suggest the possibility of a dislocation via their association with the Real.

Despite the necessary existence of symptoms, ideological fantasy manages to domesticate the effect of the Real that is inherent in symptoms. This domestication occurs through a number of techniques. Along with repression, ideological fantasy and external antagonism, super-ego demand is also common. We see the super-ego in operation within charity discourse, or Green/ethical consumerism. Perhaps the most effective device, however, is the operation of disavowal and fetishism. Disavowal occurs when the subject acknowledges the presence of the symptom, yet continues to act as if it does not exist. Disavowal is allowed to continue because of the existence of a fetished object. This object mediates the effect of the Real, via the subject, by acting as a point of jouissant investment for the subject. Thus the subject may know very well about the existence of poverty, poverty which is in stark contrast to the universal imaginary of capitalism in which they have affectively invested. Nevertheless, because of the existence of commodified objects, the subject is able to maintain this paradoxical state because the commodity substitutes for the gap that is opened up by the contradictory nature of these parallel beliefs.

Another common fetish which supports the disavowal of symptoms within capitalism is the idea that there is no alternative to capital. This allows the subject to unquestionably accept capital as a universal horizon: any failure is displaced as unavoidable or apolitical. Disavowal and fetishism are powerful forces because of the enjoyment inherent in them. The power of jouissance is such that the condition is not seen as a problem. The operation of disavowal and fetishism, along with that of the parallax view and the devices that are used to domesticate symptoms, reveal the necessity of a materialist analysis.

The issue of materialism, which jouissance raises, divides Žižek’s work from that of Ernesto Laclau. Laclau operates within much the same theoretical and political territory as Žižek, indeed his approach features a more grounded methodology for political analysis, an element that has been replicated in the methodology created in this thesis. As such, Laclau and Žižek’s works align. They both work roughly within the field of Lacanian political analysis, although each has a different take on what form this should take. In particular, Laclau has been influential in his development of the concepts of antagonism and empty signifiers. However, Laclau’s work is lacking because of the manner in which he interprets the Real.

In Laclau’s work, the Real is nothing more than a limit-point to the discursive. In contrast, Žižek takes the Real to be both a limit and an excess. By acknowledging the Real as a source of excess, the notions of jouissance and fantasy develop as vital tools for political analysis. These factors explain why social constructions that appear conditional and contingent, maintain such fixity. Nonetheless, Laclau is very critical of Žižek’s approach to the political. In their three way debate in Contingency, Hegemony and Universality (Judith Butler the other contributor), Laclau argues that Žižek is not a political commentator, but rather merely produces “a psychoanalytic discourse which draws its examples from the politico-ideological field” (Laclau, 2000a, p.289, Original emphasis). By this Laclau suggests that Žižek has nothing constructive to offer to politics, rather that Žižek’s is a purely deconstructive discourse. Indeed, in the paragraph previous to the one just cited, Laclau states (in relation to Žižek’s desire to overthrow capitalism without a ready-made alternative):

Only if that explanation is made available will we be able to start talking politics and abandon the theological terrain. Before that I cannot even know what Žižek is talking about and the more this exchange progresses, the more suspicious I become that Žižek himself does not know either (p.289).

Is the Realm of Politics beyond Psychoanalysis?

This disagreement revolves around what each of the theorist designates as a political approach. The Žižekian approach has already been laid out at the start of this chapter; it is the position taken in the thesis. To reiterate, it is theorised that psychoanalysis is inherently political because of the negative ontological status of the social. This negative ontology means that social constructions are contingent. Therefore any fixation is a political fixation. Žižek’s work is political because it operates by revealing both the contingency of a political formation, involving its symptoms and the unconscious supplement which supports the hegemonic discourse, as well the concrete universal, the hard material Truth of the discursive formation. This form of political analysis, which this thesis attempts to vehecularise in terms of a grounded methodology, is the political approach for a Žižekian perspective. For Laclau though, this is not far enough. Instead Laclau seeks to develop a positive form of politics. Here we rely on the distinction made by Stavrakakis between politics, as the day-to-day operation of the political, and the political itself (Stavrakakis, 1999, p.71). Laclau attempts to form a political model to be institutionalised: radical democracy. Radical democracy seeks to institutionalise the gap formed by the negative ontology, as revealed in Lacanian theory. This is very much a formal operation: radical democracy cannot prescribe its own content. Rather, Laclau suggests that a free society is one which is aware of the contingency of its own construction (Laclau, 1990, p.211). In this way the contingency of social constructions is to be constantly revealed and battled over; this is the ‘radical’ in radical democracy.

Stavrakakis goes further in suggesting that radical democracy must go beyond the ‘ethics of harmony’ that seeks to constitute an ideal society, a utopia (Stavrakakis, 1997, p.127). Instead Stavrakakis argues that psychoanalytic politics needs to develop an ‘ethics of the Real’ (in the limited Laclauian sense) that revolves around the constant contestation of meaning. The concept of psychoanalytic politics –in the sense of the application of a political approach in government policy and related areas – is a controversial one, indeed it signals one of the boundaries of this piece of work.

Many theorists within the Lacanian field believe that psychoanalysis and politics do not mix well, or at all. The argument revolves around what to do with the gap that is created by the negative ontological constitution of the symbolic. There are three significantly differing perspectives. The first, characterised by Elizabeth Bellamy (1993), Sean Homer (1996), Simon Tormey and Andrew Robinson (Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2003, 2005) seeks to construct a positive imaginary to fill this gap. In doing so, they query the possibility, and the desirability, of creating a psychoanalytic form of politics. It is argued, particularly by Homer, that because ideological fantasy, which sutures the gap, is so enjoyable, any political position that refuses to posit an ideological position is impotent. Because attempts at psychoanalytic politics, such as Laclau’s radical democracy, attempt to move away from any form of ideological suture, they are ineffective (Homer, 1996, p.106-8). Homer recognises the limitations of psychoanalysis in this regard and thus states that the task of creating a positive imaginary is beyond the limits of psychoanalysis.

There is some warrant to this approach, particularly as a strategy for thinking about politics within their existing form. There are, however, compelling reasons to surpass it. Firstly, as has been documented throughout this thesis, any political formation that operates through an imaginary position – as Homer suggests a political position must – needs to find a way of displacing the negativity that is inherent to the symbolic realm; as history shows, the positing of external antagonisms in order to explain the lack of fullness in a society can be disastrous e.g. Hitler’s marginalisation of the Jews. Psychoanalytic political analysis has the value of avoiding the kind of positive imaginary positions (or, more importantly the resulting displacement of lack) inherent to this kind of approach.

Secondly, politics of this form cannot move outside of the constraints that exist upon the symbolic realm. It can operate within the terms of the unconscious supplement which supports the symbolic, but it cannot bring any kind of radical shift. Only an intervention with the supplement can produce shifts of a radical magnitude.

This critique also applies to Laclau’s approach. In addition to the radical democratic project, Laclau generates a more general political strategy for the Left, involving the creation of a coalition of new social movements under the unity of an empty signifier. The success of that signifier turns upon its ability to fill the gap between the diverging perspectives and projects of those social movements. Indeed, Laclau suggests that this new, combined movement such be under the guise of the radical democracy movement (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985, p.176). Žižek is particularly critical of this approach because it cannot move outside of the conditions set by global capital.

In order to progress beyond this apparent impasse between the radical democratic project and political psychoanalysis, we should refer back to the distinction Stavrakakis makes between politics and the political. Žižek’s approach, with which this thesis associates, operates solely within the more general domain of the political. Thus, it offers a strategy for achieving radical political shifts and a method for critiquing everyday politics, but does not present a way forward for the operation of ‘regular’ politics. This is perhaps one of the weaknesses of the Žižek’s approach. Conceivably, here, Homer is correct; psychoanalytic politics are not relevant. Alternatively, it could be that Homer and Bellamy are looking for the wrong kind of outcome from psychoanalytic analyses. Neither Lacan nor Žižek argue that psychoanalytic ideas can be constituted for a utopian ethical/political order; this is simply outside of the bounds of psychoanalysis. I do not believe that many would (or should) be willing to support the ‘Lacanian Party’ in the 2008 New Zealand elections. But the impossibility of utopia does not rule out more ‘progressive’ political constructions.

The difference between utopian politics and simple societal improvement relies on a distinction between that lack which is ahistorical, as in the effect of the Real upon the symbolic order, and the lack which is historically conditioned, that is, capital. In a time when global capital has produced a condition in which humanity is paradoxically living both far beyond and beneath its material needs and the capacity of the planet to support those needs, it is this historical lack that deserves the political interest of psychoanalysis. Nonetheless, an unanswered question remains: What can psychoanalysis offer politics beyond ideological critique and dislocation? Is it that Lacanian theory can only offer a mode of understanding of the social, one that can be applied to political critique, but cannot offer a solution beyond dislocation? Here we again return to the vital distinction between politics and the political. Just as the Real sets the limits for the construction of reality, the political serves as the precondition for the operation of politics. Therefore, we may conclude by stating that, yes, psychoanalysis has no role in politics: its influence goes well beyond it, into the political.