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The Blood of Capital: An entirely speculative and unreferenced consideration of my future research path

Posted on January 17, 2011 | 2 Comments

Moving on from my thesis – which I still hope to publish in another form, one day – I am beginning to develop another research project. Although not far removed from the concerns of my thesis, it nonetheless marks a new beginning and a renewed appetite for political theoretical investigation.

The plan, essentially, remains to highlight the plight of those members of the global polis who die and suffer for the continuation and growth of profit and capital. My initial hypothesis, developed during my thesis, is that there exists an abstracted yet material grouping which directly suffers for the ‘success’ of global capital and the wealth required for the continuation of our ‘way of life’. Through an theoretical examination I wish to evoke the violence of this exclusion within the security of the ideological imagination of the global West. The central change from my thesis to this new project is that I plan to be more specific in regards to the excess population who suffers from capitalism and to focus more critical attention to both theories around this excess and geopolitical developments.

Centrally, I argue that such a group is suffers, necessarily, through the functioning of capital because;

A reserve army of labour is required for capital to reproduce the wage-labour system;
Environmental limits mean that capital cannot expand for everyone.

To paraphrase Zygmunt Bauman’s Wasted Lives, this is a concern for human waste (the consequences of production and consumption) and wasted humans.

Whilst capitalism is an entirely man-made, modernist and contingent production, I argue that it has taken on a necessity of its own. That is, the axiomatic structures of capital requires certain functionalities, the most central of which – its symptom or element of universality – is the extimate exclusion of a ‘part with no part’, a reserve army of labour which maintains the pressure of supply necessary for workers to submit their labour to the wage system: material and ideological exclusion, and most certainly inequality, is constitutive of capital.

Those most apologetic for capital, principally the United Nations and the likes of development economist Jeffery Sachs, like to promote the image of a development ‘ladder’ which excuses inequality as progress towards a universal standard of living. If the ‘West’ is developed, than Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa, amongst others, can be classified as developing: the assumption being that they will reach the point of being developed. Moreover, the ladder metaphor assumes that once other national economies attain a position on the ladder (it is assumed that this position is obtained by capitalistic structural reform) they too will be able to live like the West. Under this ideological imagination, the exportation of Western manufacturing to the ‘sweatshops’ of the developing world is a positive advance, as is the Bretton Woods inspired restructuring of subsistence farming into what Fredric Jameson has described as ‘agricultural fieldwork’ that has created such a large surplus of labour as out of work and out of land rural populations have begun to swamp urban slums in undeveloped areas.

What this notion omits, however, is that for sweatshops to operate efficiently –that is, profitably – they have to pay very low – generally subsistence or below (the subsistence of the worker being of no concern for the employer in conditions of strong labour supply) – wages in order to justify the movement of production away from the main areas of consumption. Workers, disposed of the means of production by what David Harvey has described as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ have no choice but to accept these conditions because of the presence of a surplus of workers who are able to take their place. Whilst this is excellent for the profitability of production in developing countries, it ignores the fate of those in the position of excess. If sweatshops wages are at the level of subsistence, those who provide a reserve of labour are reduced to the status of human waste, living a marginal existence of suffering and premature death.

The presence of a reserve army of labour is a well-developed Marxist concept and has been generally accepted within neo-liberal economics, in a more palpable and abstract conception, as the structural unemployment and the ‘flexibility’ of the labour market. It has also been expanded upon by world systems theorists who have viewed the global economy as interconnected, suggesting that labour supply is not only linked to local markets but the ever present possibility of relocating production to cheaper markets. As such ‘surplus’ labour should not be considered a local phenomena but, rather, considered as part of a globalised economy. Much of my work in the following months is to consider whose labour (or lack thereof) fits this category.

I wish to extend upon these considerations in regards to both my own particular theoretical perspective and existing geopolitical conditions. Essentially, I wish to develop the exclusion of this reserve army in terms of a necessary exception from capitalism using Slavoj Žižek’s notion of universality, in combination with a number of other continental philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben and Hannah Arendt. In addition, I seek to understand the plight of these wasted humans in terms of material developments, principally climate change.

It is climate change which provides the second limitation to the emancipation of the reserve army within capitalism. Without developing the science of climate change, carbon emissions and the associated with production at this point, it is clear that the global population cannot continue to consume at current levels. By most estimates if all were to reach the top end of the development ladder (which now becomes a ceiling?), another four-five planets worth of resources would be required. Moreover, with the global population predicted to rise from six to nine billion by 2050, the vast majority of which occurring in urban slums of developing countries, it is exceptionally clear that the level of global economic activity will rise to put extra-ordinary pressure upon the supporting environment. This rise may be offset to a degree by advances in technological efficiency but not nearly enough to stop the growth of carbon emissions, distribution of pollutants and exploitation of natural resources.

This is not an abstract or speculative proposition; that the poor cannot develop because of future environmental limits. Rather, the poor are beginning to feel the effect of global warming. Primarily this effect will be felt in reduction in food production caused by both the effect of increased temperatures upon crops and the consequences of these increases on water availability; as temperatures rise and snowy mountains melt, rivers dry and irrigation becomes increasingly difficult. In effect the consequence of rising temperatures is a narrower range of fertile food production areas.

Naturally, the availability of these areas does not favour the already poor and hungry and the powerful have nuclear weapons to settle any dispute that might arise.

Although we must be careful not to reduce the environmental degradation caused by capital to global warming and the ‘greenhouse effect’, it remains the most apparent and wide-ranging environmental issue. Measured in terms of carbon parts per million (ppm), the industrial era began at 280ppm and the consensus is that we have reached a level of 380ppm. If 350ppm is considered a sustainable level for human reproduction then 450ppm is considered the absolute tipping point. This point is considered to be the level at which the global temperature would have risen by 2° (with more substantial changes in the extremes), producing a number of hazardous feedback effects. Such a rise would, amongst other effects, cut food production in India by 25%, a catastrophe for the wasted populations of the world and a consequence of global capitalism. With the amount of carbon rising more quickly than previously expected, it is more than likely that we will pass this 450ppm mark before the mid point of this century.

Through the environmental damage caused by economic activity under capitalism, we can see the central contradiction of the capitalist mode of production in the 21st century -admittedly a contradiction only if capitalism is considered to reference itself to justice in any way – in order for the poor to develop their standard of living, substantial economic growth is required, increasing both the standards of the poor and the rich, whose wealth ‘trickles’ down. In order to maintain a climate which is conducive to human civilisation – what is known as the Holocene epoch – it is clear that economic activity must strongly decrease (as well as technological advances increasing). Such a decrease, however, can only have negative effects upon the poor.

As a consequence of both the growing number of the excess human population and the growing stresses upon this population, it is highly likely that undocumented population movements from poorer to wealthier areas will be a notable and highly debated feature of the 21^st century as the West comes to face its disavowed foundations. As has been seen in the fate of ‘boat people’ across the world, most notably in Australia and in and around North Africa and the Mediterranean, the consequences can be disturbing.

Growing urban slum populations, decreased food production and water availability does not project a positive future for those in the red zone of capitalist exploitation. Clearly, barring a black swan technological event our only chance of surviving in any form of civilisation similar to the past lies in either radical geo-engineering with humanity playing the part of a planetary life-system machine or a transformation in the mode of production such that the poorest can develop an adequate standard of living.

My planned research seeks to understand and evoke these conditions by way of a theoretical investigation. Whilst often using empirical scientific evidence and constantly founded in geopolitical conditions, the heart of my enquiry remains theoretical. Specifically, I seek to use a Marxist-psychoanalytic framework to suggest that the fate of the poorest member of humanity is not a distant tragedy but is rather intimately linked the ‘way of life’ of the Western world. It is a natural consequence of the capitalist mode of production.

So, that is my stream of consciousness, entirely unverified research project for the foreseeable future.

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Tagged Climate Change, Marx, Poverty, Reserve Army of Labour, Zizek

Marxism after the Signifier

Posted on May 28, 2010 | 3 Comments

Marxism has dominated Leftist political practice since its conception. Today, however, Marxism dominates predominately by virtue of its absence. Marxism has been dealt some traumatic blows, both intellectually and politically. Most noticeable in this regard has been the fall of ‘actually existing socialism’ following its symbolic death towards the end of the 20^th century. This death has been accompanied by a loss of faith in the essentialist interpretations of history and/or the hope of there being a revolutionary subject. Without the presence of an actually existing communism, or hope of a revolutionary subject which might restore history, Marxism appears as dead as Fukuyama’s sense of history.

Marxism now exists only as passing reference to the bad old days, or, for some, the good old days of certainty. This break has been both ontological and political. The postmodern turn, with its associated focus on language and on particularity has been combined with the decline of communism and the increasingly resigned dispossession of the proletariat. Moreover, the events of 1968 – which simultaneously launched the start of a number of ‘new social movements’ and killed off the hopes of many a revolutionary – and of 1989, finally finished off Marxism as a political cause even if some outposts and out of fashion theorists, such as Žižek, did not get the message. These events, combined with the ‘turn to language’ that characterised the move towards postmodernity, meant that theorists could no longer speak of class struggle, of communism, and of the revolutionary subject, without an ironic smirk.

In this chapter we shall return the losses and gains for Marxism after its invasion by analytic concerns about the signifier. Rejecting the initial positivism of Marxism, we consider the ‘turn to language’ that has called into question the foundational fundamentals of Marxism. This discursive turn found a willing participant within Marxism itself as a way of explaining the failure of history to bring about its own consummation, and of the revolutionary subject to advance that progression. In doing so, Marxist theory moved away from the economy of historical materialism and into culture. What began as a supplement, however, has ended up colonising the entire approach such that the signifier ‘Marx’ appears to be no longer required in Leftist political practice.

Such a dismissal has been a major loss for global politics. The withdrawal from the universal and emancipatory dimension of Marxism has allowed for circumstances in which global capitalism has become more widely influential than any mode of politics in history. Today it seems the only feasible alternative to the market is a withdrawal into various religious fundamentalisms, themselves a reaction to the instability of capitalism and of its attendant social inequality.

While a move away from essentialism in favour of a focus on culture, on language, and on the politics of enjoyment might generally be applauded, the losses have been more significant. In particular forms of postmodern thought have sought to distance themselves from any sense of widespread emancipation, revolution and certainly any notion of the collective Good. Moreover, a gap has opened up between postmodernity and the economic. As a result, the Left – either in terms of the turn to postmodernity or in more administrative forms – has not been able to establish a critical sense of political economy and in particular politics after the discursive turn.

Towards the end of the 20^th Century, however, Laclau’s re-reading of the Marxist category of hegemony offered the possibility of returning to the question of universality within the realm of discourse. Yet, although Laclau’s work provided a break from the flighty dominance of postmodern thought, his post-Marxism operates through a distancing of analysis from the economy. For Laclau and other post-Marxists, the economy was an element of discourse and thus could not be distinguished from the political. Whilst we might agree that the economy could not be anything but discursive, it is nonetheless vital to insist upon the role of the economy.

Two substantive consequences flow from Laclau’s conflation of politics and the economy. Firstly, he ends up largely ignoring the economy and capitalism in favour of democracy and the freedom provided by dislocations in the symbolic order. The materiality of class struggle or the suffering of bodies appears not to be on Laclau’s agenda. Secondly, Laclau reduces politics to discourse at the expense of materiality. Laclau’s ontology does not specify a driving source, as such, if language is only held together by reference to itself and politics is purely discursive, then fundamental political change should be relatively commonplace. If Laclau has rejected essentialism in favour of contingency, then political practices remain curiously stubborn.

In order to return to both the economy and materiality in Marxism, I turn to psychoanalysis, particularly Žižek’s Lacanian psychoanalysis. I find that although psychoanalysis and Marxism have a difficult relationship, the particularly Lacanian conception of language provides the possibility of restoring some of the traditional value of Marxism. Again, however, this comes at a cost as the potentially nihilistic failure of language to suture itself continues to haunt politics.

Positive Marxism

Marx’s work is often assumed to be the quintessential example of essentialism, from his grand explanation of the historical destiny of the working class to the inalienable good represented by communism. Certainly, much of postmodernity is built upon a rejection of this image. While we might acknowledge that Marx’s understanding of the essential direction of history might fit this image, ironically his conception of communism may have more in common with the postmodern rejection of abstract moralism. Nonetheless, the consequence of the turn to language has been a tendency to reject both the inevitability and scale of Marx’s theory of history, resulting in a breakdown in the political efficiency of Marxist politics.

Marx’s work was a fusion of description and prescription as he sought to develop a philosophy which changed what it sought to understand (Eagleton, 1997: 3). Marxism can be considered an ‘Emancipatory Philosophy’ which seeks to develop a relationship between epistemology and politics. Marx argued that an understanding of the contours of capitalism – particularly by the proletariat, who both suffer most from capitalism and are most able to act against it – would be enough to produce a revolutionary class transformation. Of course, knowledge does not bring change in the way Marxists imagined[1]. Indeed, much of the history of Marxism after Marx has considered why knowledge of exploitation under capitalism either remains hidden or has no effect upon those who are exploited – as we shall expand on throughout the remainder of this thesis, much of this explanatory duty has fallen to psychoanalysis.

Although Marx argued that historical change required a revolutionary subject rather than a teleological sense of itself, he very much relied upon a deterministic theory of history based around the materiality of production. This determinism can be represented by Marx’s supposed ‘base-superstructure’ model, through which he suggested that the mode of production came to determine political affairs. This model is based upon the following statement from Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy;

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. (Marx & Engels, 1980: 11-12)

From this idea, Marx argued that all social change comes from contradictions in the form of the economy. As such, the revolutionary transformation from capitalism to socialism and finally communism would come from the proletariat as the revolutionary subject. In this sense the ‘superstructure’ only mediated against the material contradictions of the economy (Eagleton, 1997: 13).

Moreover, Marx conceived that the human essence could be derived from the materiality of production, production here being divorced from the strictly economic. If postmodernity – and later modernity to an extent – has rejected any sense of foundationalism, Marx argued that ‘species being’ is the material ground for the human condition (ibid.: 17). Species being embodies both Marx’s deterministic view of materiality and production but also his conflation of description and prescription. For Marx, species being – how we are – determines how we should be.

Species being, otherwise known as ‘species essence’ (depending on the translation of the German Gattungsewesen) attempts to capture the social yet materialised nature of the human condition. What is essential to our species being is the recognised interdependence of human beings, a social bond required by the necessity of material production (production here is not reduced to economy). Through the specialisation of labour which characterises production under capitalism, Marx argued that the worker is alienated from this human essence; communism would bring about the end of alienation.

There is, of course, much more to be said about Marx’s conception of human nature and the possibility of avoiding its alienation. It is not, however, my intention to do so in this project. Rather mu task here is to reveal the extent to which Marx attempted to anchor his work in the kind of foundational ground specifically rejected in postmodernity.

As well as Marx’s concept of human essence, postmodern discourses have sought to move away from both the grand narrative of history and the sense of morality which is presumed to prevail throughout Marxism. In terms of a grand narrative, Marx argued that history before communism (which he labels pre-history) has been the story of class struggle as the forces and relations of production come into contradiction. It is through this narrative that Marx explained what he conceived as the major epochs of history; from primitive communism or tribal production to ancient, feudal and finally the capitalist mode of production. Each revolution in production had been caused by a breakdown in the relationship between those that control production and those who produce. This process proceeds, according to Marx, by way of the ‘iron laws of history’. Nonetheless, history for Marx was not a teleological process; rather history proceeds through the embodied actions of man. For this reason, although Marx argued that the transformation from the capitalist to communism mode of production was inevitable, he relied upon the proletariat as the revolutionary subject which would realise their destiny through self-knowledge of their historical position.

Certainly, Marxism affirms a grand explanation of the existing but whether it offers a sense of morality beyond this is a matter for debate (see Brenkett, 1983; Rosen, 2000; Wood, 2004: 18). Eagleton (1997: 43) asserts that Marxism is not structured around an abstract idealism but, rather, a rejection of the apparent contradiction between the ideals of modernity and the practicalities of capitalism. Marx’s rejection of capitalism is not so much in the name of the full expression of species being under communism but, rather, the end of the contradiction within capitalism that, according to Eagleton; “In accumulating the greatest wealth that history has ever witnessed the capitalist class has done so within the context of social relations which have left most of its subordinates hungry, wretched and oppressed” (ibid.: 44).

Marx did not suggest that communism represented any sense of the ‘Good’. Indeed, he rejected abstract moral explanations, refusing to critique capitalism in these terms. Marx argued that morality was just the ideology by which the ruling elite justify the existing relations of production (Wood, 2004: 127-142). Morality was never abstract in the sense of being outside of history, consisting of idealistic laws and standards of behaviour but, rather, sprung from existing material conditions. By contrast to utopian socialists of his time, Marx did not specifically argue that the wage-labour system was an injustice but, rather, the only form of economic justice available within capitalism. Although he might have used the term ‘exploitation’ to describe the vulnerability of labour to capital that produces surplus-value and the conditions of the worker, he did not use this term pejoratively (see ibid.: 242-264).

Although Marx did not explicitly reference his critique of capitalism to an abstract moralism, there does appear to be a hidden morality implicit in his work. One does not implore people to ‘throw off their chains’ in the name of history alone. Not only is Marx’s work often full with depreciatory terms such as ‘Robbery’ and ‘Injustice’ but his understanding of the alienated subject of capitalism as at odds with their ‘species being’ implies an understanding of the Good, even if Marx was unwilling to prescribe it any further in his conception of communism. Moreover, statements like ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!’ from Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program appear to be as much of a moral imperative as anything we might find in the likes of Kant. Indeed, the Communist Manifesto forms a very programmatic statement – written as it is for a specific political purpose – although it was one that was at odds with the general thrust of Marx’s work. Nonetheless, Marx certainly had a strong dislike for the contemporary order and an equally forceful commitment to the possibilities of the future. Even if Marx’s original work was not a discourse of morality, Marxism and the forms of communism which have followed cannot be considered in the same light[2]. If Marx’s sense of essentialism was limited to history, much of the Marxism which followed installed communism as the transcendental sense of the Good.

In this sense, whilst we would do well to note Marx’s ambiguity in regards to morality, the construction of Marxism to which we respond in this thesis holds to an historical grand narrative and the transcendental Good of communism. I do so not to develop a straw-man which would allow for a cleaner academic argument but, rather, as a consideration of the consequences of Marx’s work. It is possible that Marx himself considered morality to be contingent but that has not been the predominant application of his politics. Moreover, Marxism has certainly relied upon a foundation but only in a descriptive conception of the path of history. For Marx, however, the descriptive merged into the prescriptive such that he did not require a moral foundation; history provided it for him. In doing so, Marx believed that he had circumvented the need for a moral foundation.

The relationship between Marxism, morality, and essentialism is obviously a difficult one – it could make for the foundations of a thesis in itself. Anything produced in this short section will be insufficient. Nonetheless, the vital point to be taken from this section is that Marxism, and the forms of communism that followed, relied upon a determinate sense of history, one that stemmed from an essential foundation. As a corollary, the impotence of Marxism as a response to capitalism in the 21^st century came about because of the twin failure of the totalitarian regimes inspired by his work and the meta-narrative of history which suggested the inevitable transition between capitalism and communism. Marxism lost its efficiency as an intellectual and political current because the explanations and politics it relied upon were no longer considered valid, in large part of because of their failure as a political doctrine.

In response to these failures, Marxists began to both consider alternative forms of politics and less deterministic conceptions of history. This latter consideration turned to culture and politics as more than a simple reflection of the mode of production. In so doing this rethinking of Marxism became entangled with the reconceptualisation of culture itself and what came to be known as the ‘discursive turn’. Whilst this turn provided a necessary rethinking of Marxism, much has been lost.

Ontology and the Discursive Turn

The turn to language – otherwise known as the linguistic or discursive turn – which has dominated social theory since the 1960s is characterised by the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent development of post-structuralism. The focus on the ontological dominance of language turned the issue of representation and truth into a dilemma for modernism and a site of the state of impossibility for the postmodern. Rather than conceiving words to be an imitation of the thing they seek to represent, Saussure contended that meaning develops only in relation to other signifiers; meaning develops from the differences between signifiers, not from the referent. For this reason the signifier is arbitrary, contingent upon a history of relationships with other signifiers such that meaning is ultimately differential rather than natural. Because meaning is differential, there are no positive meanings – there are no signifiers which mean in and of themselves – and language becomes a negative substance (Ashenden, 2005: 197).

Saussure, however, considered language to be a system in the sense that all differential meanings form a closed chain: structuralism, for post-structuralists like Jacques Derrida, was not radical enough. Structuralism still reproduced the logic and pathos of Western metaphysics, giving language a systematic presence. Instead, Derrida problematised the notion of language as a system, describing it as ‘a structure lacking any centre’ (Derrida, 1967: 352) . In language, meaning is always deferred, and vitally does not catch up with itself; meaning is always ‘still to come’.

The turn to language led to the dominance of negative ontological theory. It rejected not only a grounding in a natural referent but also in a transcendental signifier; a signifier with a positive meaning that could somehow ‘fix’ the contingency of all meaning. In Marx’s terms this was the mode of production from which the superstructure developed. The rejection of the transcendental signifier has had immense implications for social theory and political practice. In theoretical terms, because any sense of meaning could only be grounded in language itself there is no outside to language; Derrida (1976: 158), for example, famously remarked that ‘There is nothing outside of the text’[3].

This rejection of realism is not necessary idealist. We do not necessarily have to go down the road of Bishop Berkeley, conceiving that only what is constructed in the mind exists. A tree does indeed fall in the woods despite no one being around to hear it crash. More pertinently, children die in poverty and ice shelves collapse regardless of their documentation[4]. This is a problem Laclau dealt with effectively in debates with traditional Marxists such as Norman Geras (1987) who were unable to come to grips with the consequences of his re-reading of Marxism through the notions of hegemony and discourse. Laclau states:

the discursive character of an object does not, by any means, imply putting its existence into question. The fact that a football is only a football as long as it is integrated within a system of socially constructed rules does not mean that is thereby ceases to be a physical object. (Laclau & Mouffe, 1990: 100-101, original emphasis)

Nonetheless, language – or, in Laclau terms, discourse – provides the horizon through which things appear meaningful: there can be no sense of objectivity or transcendental truth. This has had significant political consequences, at a theoretical level at least. Political formations could no longer make appeals to something outside of themselves, such as God, the Nation, rationality or human nature. These concepts which once provided a guarantee existed only as differential elements in a chain of infinitely deferred meaning. Nonetheless, attempts to access an essentialist anchoring point have not ceased. Indeed, as political liberalism began to question what were once considered the foundations of a good society, various fundamentalist narratives have fought back. Many who would consider the concept of a ‘transcendental signifier’ to be academic mumbo-jumbo, still believe in the transcendental status of God and are willing to bring a gun to a town-hall meeting on health care reform to prove it (see Collins, 2009).

The overarching value of the turn to language, however, has been the capacity to understand these political movements as ideological attempts to fix the chain of meaning. Ideological critique became not a matter of revealing a concealed concrete truth – that there is no God, perhaps, or the contradictions in the mode of production – but, rather, a critique of the abstract manner in which ideological constructions are named. It did not matter what proper name was given to God, only that a God-like signifier can have a structuring role at all. Negative ontological political theory did not seek to substitute one truth with another – the Proletariat being a superior Truth than God – but, rather, began to consider what we meant by ‘Truth’. It is this move – from Truth to the meaning of Truth – that signalled a transition from traditional modernism to late modernism and postmodernism.

The turn to language, however, is not a paradoxically homogenous Truth in itself, somehow outside of history. Rather, it is itself an historical discourse, the fundamental elements of which continue to be a focus of debate. As we shall see in this chapter and the next, there are substantive differences between and within poststructuralist or postmodern ontologies and that of psychoanalysis. Moreover, these differences relate to significant distinctions both in what it means to practice politics and political performance itself. Nonetheless, it is vital to note that the turn to language was a significant moment in political theory. In terms of Marxism, this ontological movement marked a change from culture as a supplement to the economy to culture as a determinant in itself. The turn proved a significant threat to Marxism, already challenged by historical events, the link between which was only just becoming clear. What began as an attempt to supplement Marxism ended up rejecting it all together. Both moves occurred within the framework of postmodernism.

The Postmodern Break

Postmodernity is, according to Eagleton:

The contemporary movement of thought which rejects totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human essence and the possibility of objective knowledge. Postmodernism is sceptical of truth, unity and progress, opposes what it sees as elitism in culture, tends towards cultural relativism, and celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and heterogeneity. (2003: 13)

Rejecting any possibility of a political anchor that would provide the basis for the kind of essentialism that once defined Marxism, postmodern discourses have emphasised the contingency of language and the differentiality of meaning. Without any metaphysical ambitions, postmodernism suggests a philosophical relativism that at best provides support for diversity, for difference and for a flowering freedom of identity positions. At worst this form of social constructivism leads to cultural support for a cynically debauched wallowing in consumerism and for an administrated hedonism quite divorced from the politics – and political consequences – of its construction.

Nonetheless, postmodernism did not develop in the absence of Marxism but partially as an attempt to reform it. Those acknowledged to be at the forefront of postmodernity, including Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard, each began their work within the Marxist paradigm (Smart, 2005: 259). If, however, these theorists began with the Marxist problematic they largely distanced themselves from Marxism in their latter work. Lyotard, once an avowed Marxist and member of French rebel groups Socialism ou Barbarie and Pouvoir Ouvrier, began to theorise in earnest about the rise of postmodernity around the same time that he came to the realisation that the proletariat was no longer a feasible revolutionary subject (P. Anderson, 1998: 26). Indeed, as Lyotard expanded his conception of the postmodern condition, it became increasingly directed towards a rejection of the scale and economic determinism of Marxism. Marxism was just as much a rational meta-narrative as capital and, as such, both should be opposed.

There was much value in the rethinking of Marxism, one that started before the emergence of postmodernism in what came to be known as ‘Western Marxism’. Beginning with the likes of Georg Lukàcs, Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, this label emerged largely as a way to distinguish between the ‘messy’ political practice of Marxism in the USSR and more critical and philosophical forms which emerged in the global West. Arising from attempts to explain the historical failures of Marxism and recognition that change had to be cultural to be effective as economic conditions alone would not produce revolution, Western Marxism focused more on culture and politics, generally discarding the economic determinism of historical materialism.

As a result of the move from economy to culture, much of the rethinking of Marxism was framed in terms of a reconsideration of the essentialist ontology which came to be expressed as the base-superstructure model. What started as an attempt to explain the failure of revolution resulted in the rejection of the idea of revolution altogether. Moreover, what begun as an attempt to place more emphasis on politics and culture has resulted in the death of the notion of economy altogether, except in practice: ironically, as Marxism and Leftist politics have moved away from the economy, capitalism and the logic of the market became more dominant. As Jameson (1991: 5) states ominously:

this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world: in this sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror.

Postmodernism and Marxism

The strongest blow to Marxism was the first. When Lyotard rejected any sense of grand narrative, the narrative to which he referred was Marxism (Eagleton, 2003:38). The death of the grand narrative signals perhaps the most fundamental element of postmodernism; the rejection of foundationalism and essentialism. Awareness that the referentiality of language left social life without any ultimate guarantee, meant there could be no grand narrative on which to support a vision of politics; any such narrative would have to rely upon a signifier that did not rely upon another. Language proved to be a poor substitute for God or transcendental rationality.

Nonetheless, postmodernism looks suspiciously like “a new epic fable of the end of epic fables”, as Eagleton put it (ibid.: 45). This deterministic narrative about the rejection of deterministic epistemology has led to something of a normative crisis[5]; it has become academically embarrassing to speak seriously about morality. Morality was for those who broke up parties. If the grand narrative is dead, then everything and nothing is possible[6]. Postmodernism, in this sense, can be regarded as deeply conservative, both because the rejection of all foundations has led many to search for even deeper foundations – hence the rise of fundamentalisms in the 21^st century – and because of the dismissal of emancipation that became associated with the death of determinism.

Only the most vulgar forms of postmodernity – generally found in cultural practice rather than political theory – dismissed ethics altogether, even if morality was a step too far. Postmodern thinkers began to reconsider what it meant to live the Good life, a large part of which included the rethinking of ‘Good’ meant and whether it was still appropriate to speak of it with a capital ‘G’. Much of the ethical thinking of those of a negative ontological bent is itself negative; a critique of those unities that should be differences. For these postmodernists, any hint of the normative or unity is immediately repressive. Benevolent as it might be to invoke the concept, it immediately restored the primacy of God: etymologists in search of the origins of meaning were the ultimate theists. Because language itself has a normative dimension – language is naturally repressive because it narrows down difference by turning differences into a categorical unity[7] – the task of postmodern ethics was to open up this unity in a celebration of difference (ibid.: 13).

The removal of the emancipatory drive can be regarded as the biggest loss of postmodernism. Without the presence of a transcendental signifier against which to index a sense of the Good, thoughts of global emancipation appear foolishly utopian. Laclau, although not considered a postmodernist, embodies the postmodern position when he states; “We are today at the end of emancipation and at the beginning of freedom” (Laclau, 1996: 18)[8]. Whose freedom is up for grabs is uncertain.

Emancipation is incommensurable with postmodern thought, as it invokes unfashionable universal constructions and collective movements whose rationale depended upon the of one or other grand narrative. Most importantly, emancipation rightfully brought up the question of the auspice under which it would occur. The prospect of widespread political transformation relied upon notions of power and universalism that were no longer palatable. Emancipation sounded too much like the unity of the concept, as opposed to the freedom of difference.

Nonetheless, this is not to suggest that postmodern forms of thought construct the social world unproblematically. The opposite is properly true: many forms of postmodernity – deconstructionism, for example – are hypercritical of existing constructions. It is just that for postmodern thought the problem of emancipation amounted to a deconstruction of the meta-physical assumptions inherent in the act of deploying the signifier rather than any material change in people’s lives.

Yet, postmodernism is not without value. The danger inherent in the illusionary nature of truth and essentialism has been the biggest lesson postmodernity has taught Leftist politics. No longer can we hold innocently to any sense of ideology, longing for the annihilation of an enemy who is nothing but an ideological construction. The Left should be more than reluctant to forget the horrors that have been committed in its name, particularly in the image of Marxism. As such, for Bauman, postmodernity is modernity without illusions, a reminder that modernism has limits (Bauman, 1993: 32)[9].

Moreover, no form of politics beyond the local – or even political engagement – appears to stem from any form of postmodernity, particularly in regards to the problem of global sustainability to which this thesis is directed. At best we might consider the disparate realm of postmodern thought to offer a critique of industrial modernism or a deconstruction of the manner in which capital is constructed. Nonetheless, for postmodern theorists, there appears to be something a little too material, too grand and perhaps too economic, about the contradictions of global capitalism – it brings back the haunting spectre of Marxism.

Indeed, we can consider that postmodernism – instead of being a radical form of emancipation from identity – is just the latest form of capitalism. If early modernity had considered capital to require the parochial discipline that characterised the industrial era, modernity’s combined and uneven entry into a postmodern era was considered to be a mortal threat to the interests of capitalism. For Jameson , however, postmodernity has actually saved capitalism from its own inherent contradictions (Jameson, 1991, 1996). He postulates that the burgeoning development of social identities that came with the birth of postmodernism became a seamless cure for the ills of overproduction, as, along with the financialisation of capital, new social identities were ideal for the development of new products and new markets.

These markets were created upon the predominant form of politics that has emerged from the turn to language and postmodernity, known as the ‘new social movements’, or identity politics. Whilst these movements have provided the impetus for the liberation of very real limitations upon subjective expression, they cannot be considered to be subversive. Rather than acting as a threat to capitalism, working women, racial enlightenment and sexual reform allowed the development of new and profitable markets. Postmodernism may have been experienced as liberation for those outside of the hegemony of the white man within Western nations but this expression has come to little more than the commodification of cultural difference. Westerners may have a more diverse range of restaurants at which to eat but for those who experience eating as an infrequent necessary, postmodern liberation remains entirely other[11].

Thus, while postmodernism acts as a valuable reminder of the dangers of totalising forms of modernist practice, it provides no answer to either the contradictions of contemporary capitalism or the pragmatic attempts to restore the smooth functioning of capital. Moreover, postmodernism operates as a supplement to the modernist approach to politics embodied by Sachs. Whilst this form of Leftist administrative politics works pragmatically towards softening the injustices of capitalism, postmodern culture allows for a celebration of its benefits. Ultimately there is something a little tragic about postmodernity; the Left appears gun-shy, unwilling to take power in any radical sense lest the mistakes of the past are repeated. It is, as Eagleton states in regards to the foundations of the Western empire; ‘a rather awkward moment in human history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions’ (2003:102). Whilst lessons must be learned from postmodern discourse on epistemology and ontology, contemporary circumstances, in which the contradictions of capitalism are becoming more apparent yet political alternatives are all but extinct, demand a re-entry into the political and the question of universality. Moreover, whilst the postmodern re-reading of Marxism has been necessary, this reading has taken away the universal (and economic) dimensions of Marxism’s critique of capitalism; that capitalism must be opposed through a discourse of emancipation is several steps too far for many forms of postmodern discourse.

Marxism remains, however, the radical alternative form of political economy with the potential to persist against the meta-hegemony of capitalism. It is only through Marxism that the dimension of political economy remains alive. In order to respond to the material contradictions of global capitalism, we must not accept the split horizon constituted by the likes of Sachs and the postmodernists. Rather, we must return to a rethinking of the Marxist tradition and the dimension of universality. The difficulty lies in proceeding with a Marxist approach without the materialist guarantee of history that supported the sense of normativity which hegemonised Marxian politics. We must consider how one can hold to class exploitation as the ultimate form of capitalism, or communism as unquestionable form of the Good, whilst accepting the ontological differentiality of the signifier. Even if we take comfort from Marx’s own rejection of morality, we must note that he was only able to hold this position on the basis of his determinist conception of history.

Against these difficulties, it has been the restoration of universality as a category, as has emerged within the discursive turn, which has provided the impetus for post-Marxist theory. For theorists such as Laclau, the discursive turn is not as a threat but, rather, a vital moment in the renewal of the Marxist historical project. Nonetheless, despite this restoration of the primacy of Marxism itself, the concepts of communism and class struggle appeared to fade away so as to leave Marxism without the critical edge provided by its theoretical foundations. It is to Laclau and post-Marxism that we now turn in order to consider these attempts to restore Marxism within the discursive turn.

(Post)Marxism, Laclau and the Shrinking Hegemony of Socialist Strategy

Perhaps the first text in what is now regarded as post-Marxist theory is Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985). This breakthrough book introduced both discourse theory and its political dimension, radical democracy. Laclau and Mouffe began from within the Marxist tradition – the work attempts to re-articulate socialist strategy (emphasis is required on both these terms) and uses Gramsci’s reading of the Marxist concept of hegemony to do so – but establishes a strong break with Marxism, such that it is the first openly ‘post-Marxist’ text. Post-Marxist discourse is split, as British political theorist Mark Devenney states, between:

the need to keep in sight the normative idealism which underpins one spirit of Marx, the insistence that things ought to be otherwise[and] … On the other hand post-Marxist accounts cannot retain intact the rationalist and deterministic limitations of the Western Marxist tradition’ (2002: 9).

Moreover, following Jameson’s contention (1996: 1) contention that post-Marxisms emerge in response to changes in the structure of capitalism, New Zealand sociologist Chamsy el-Ojeili (2009) argues that we can identify a ‘Post-Marxism I’ and ‘Post-Marxism II’. He suggests that the first associates Marxism with the ‘sins’ of modernism and consists of a rethinking of its theoretical framework without necessarily developing the political consequences of this revaluation. As such, this move relocates the locus of ‘Marxist’ critique from capitalism to modernism. As a consequence, the central tenet of this form of post-Marxism is that the problem with both Marxism and capitalism is that they are both too rational, too modernist; instead, an entirely different mode of being is required. In this sense, post-Marxism remains Marxist by association only, having more in common with the forms of postmodernity described in the previous section (ibid.: 41-44).

By contrast, post-Marxism II, as conceived by el-Ojeili, is more of a rejuvenated response to the restructuring and expansion of global capitalism. These forms, and here el-Ojeili includes Badiou as well as Hardt and Negri, focus more on Marxist politics rather than their theoretical underpinning (ibid.: 46). We shall deal with all these approaches (within which we also include Žižek) through the remainder of the thesis as we consider the prospects for Marxism theory after the turn to language. For now, however, I shall consider Laclau’s rethinking of both Marxist theory and politics, acknowledging that post-Marxism has come to be ‘hegemonically’ characterised by Laclau’s discourse theory and the Essex school at which he is based.

Along with Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau’s approach has been further supplemented with New Reflections on the Revolutions of Our Time (1990). In this text, Laclau (particularly in a chapter co-authored with Mouffe, Post-Marxism without Apologies (1990)) declares an affinity to Marxism and to the benefits of psychoanalysis but, ultimately, argues that it is the category of discourse which holds the trump card. For Laclau, if language constructs the social field, this construction is never complete, such that ‘Society does not exist’. This incomplete field of meanings is what Laclau labels discourse. The battle of politics – a battle of hegemony – is the ultimately impossible struggle to fix meaning around certain nodal signifier. These signifiers, which Laclau labels empty signifiers, establish a chain of equivalence.

It is around the empty signifier that Laclau, against the central thrust of postmodernity, attempts to return to the category of universality. This restoration, however, has little in common with the sense of universality apparent in the modernist tradition in which Marx was embedded. Early modernism – that established before the discursive turn – assumed an objective correspondence between language and the material world. As such, establishing a universal truth, either in terms of ontology or politics, was a matter of the correct epistemological approach. This is seen in Marx’s historical materialism, where he argued that an objective, and thus universal, truth could be established by using the correct interpretative tools. Moreover, this approach remains hegemonic amongst the ‘administrative Left’ we noted in the introductory chapter. Sachs, for example, assumes that natural science (and economics) is wholly objective. Moreover, he comes to argue that the capitalist form of economics is the universal form and can thus be applied ‘clinically’ to the symptoms of global capitalism (2005a).

In contrast, postmodernist forms of thought rejected the possibility of any form of universality, arguing that the lack of any final transcendental signifier meant that any attempt to find ‘Truth’ was ultimately differential and particular. For Laclau, however, the focus on particularism, as well as being philosophically inept, is also a form of political defeatism. Instead, if movements are to grip the polis they must appeal to universality. In regards to the impotence of particularly, Laclau (and Mouffe) state;

If the demands of a subordinated group are presented purely as negative demand subversive of a certain order, without being linked to any viable project for the reconstruction of specific areas of society, their capacity to act hegemonically will be excluded from the outset. (1985: 189)

Laclau (1996: 36) nonetheless argues – for the same reasons asserted by postmodernist thinkers – that the universal is impossible. Yet, he insists it is necessary. This simultaneous necessity is asserted by the presence of the empty signifier which holds the place of the universal. The signifier which holds this place is not naturally given but, rather, established by way of discursive battles for hegemony. Given that the categories of discourse and hegemony define the political field, political battles become strategic, with particular groupings forming coalitions under a single signifier. If at the moment the hegemonic Leftist signifier is ‘Green’, then ‘chains of equivalence’ have built around this signifier, with the result that Green groupings, whether political parties or otherwise, come to hold the multiple demands which characterise contemporary Leftist politics, most notably the politics of anti-discrimination.

Moreover, Laclau does not only designate a formal matrix of political performance but supplements this ontology with a normative vision, one that subverts the possibility of any sense of foundational normativity. Laclau’s sense of the normative stems, like Marx, from his ontological commitments. For Laclau, the contingency of language allows for the possibility of human freedom from ideological subjugation and containment. As such, the early Laclau suggested that this freedom is best represented by what he, amongst others, labels ‘radical democracy’.

Radical democracy has two readily identifiable dimensions. The first is a celebration of contingency. Laclau argued that; “True liberation does not therefore consist in projecting oneself towards a moment that would represent the fullness of time but, on the contrary, in showing the temporal – and consequently transient – character of all fullness” (1990: 193) and goes on to state; “A free society is not one where a social order has been established that is better adapted to human nature but one which is more aware of the contingency and historicity of any order” (ibid.: 211).

Yet, there is an apparent contradiction here, one that also haunted Marx’s work. It is because Laclau sought to envisage politics “beyond the positivity of the social”[12] (1985: 93) that he came to reject historical materialist politics in favour of a discursive reading of the Gramscian category of hegemony. This is, if nothing else, a conception of human nature, leading to a social order which is better adapted to that nature; one without the production of antagonisms which have haunted essentialist politics. Certainly, Laclau would be extremely reluctant to be associated with any notion of ‘human nature’ but such a postulation is simply the condition of possibility for any theory of being.

Ultimately, Laclau is unable to historcise his own sense of historicity. Instead, his post-essentialist sense of democracy sits somehow outside of the dialectics of history. This ahistorical positioning leads to Laclau’s conception of the content of the radical democratic horizon. This consists of an articulation around the fundamental inconsistency of discourse and hegemony. Laclau comes to suggest – with an increasingly loose reference to socialism – that the best strategy for Leftist politics is the development of an articulated coalition of what had come to be known as new social movements, predominately consisting of identity politics, post-colonialism and the burgeoning ecological movement. The key to this strategy has been the dismissal of any notion of a single, privileged, agent of change – the revolutionary subject – in favour of the politics of hegemony and the empty signifier.

Laclau’s work has come in for strident critique from within the discipline; so much so that has work has radically changed direction over recent years. The first critique pertains largely to the same issues that affect Lacanian ethics. That is, both the dismissal of the politics of a negative ontology, often by Marxists suffering from both nostalgia and more than a hint of historical blindness (cf. Geras, 1987), and the more considered critique of those that suggest that the Laclauian approach is unable to posit an normative sense of itself. In this sense Laclau’s Marxism is haunted by the same nihilism that has plagued continental philosophy since Kant, that of establishing a sense of the ‘Good’ without a foundational signifier which would guarantee the Good.

Laclau’s solution is a radical recognition of that which is not contingent; contingency itself. If, however, for Laclau the society that is most free is that which is aware of its dependency upon discourse, one must consider what this means for those bodies which have been excluded from the material fruits for society. One could perhaps expand Laclau’s thesis – which he does not do – to suggest that the exclusion of these bodies is entirely contingent and can thus be altered. Moreover, this awareness of the contingency of societal construction could be extended by including the previously excluded within a democratic chain of equivalence, such that the globally subjugated became included within a global demand for justice.

If Marx attempted to circumvent the problem of normativity with his ‘scientific’ historical materialism, which did not rely upon an ideological morality as much as a faith in the progress of history, then the postmodern critique of this determinism left Marxism without any reason to be ‘Marxist’. That is, without a transcendental support for the politics of class struggle and politics, either from a descriptive reading of history or abstract moral prescription, there appeared little reason for post-Marxist thought to reference itself to Marxism.

Indeed, this was the case with Laclau. Although his breakthrough text referenced a rereading of socialist strategy – and a rethinking of the contingency imposed by postmodernity – he came to rely on democracy and politics at the expense of class and the economy to such an extent that his work can no longer be reasonably considered to be Marxist. Marxism, it seems, had been reduced to an empty signifier around which the Left could rally to establish their radical credentials. In terms of political practice, the only difference – with the exception of some institutional tweaking – between the politics of radical democracy supported by the early Laclau and the liberal democracy practiced under late capitalism, is their theoretical reference point.

For this reason, for those who still hold to both a strident critique of capitalism and the validity of Marxist discourse, Laclau’s work has come under attack. The primary motivation behind post-Marxism is the economy cannot be an object in itself and as such cannot determine social relations other than through the contingency of hegemony. Thus the economy is not economic in and of itself but, rather, just another element of political discourse. Arguing that there is no difference between postmodern struggles and class struggle, Laclau rejects any sense of the primacy of the economy, contending; ‘class struggle is just one species of identity politics, and one which is becoming less and less important in the way we live’(Laclau, 2000b: 203). In a sense, Laclau is correct; class struggles are becoming less important in the way we (the West) live. It is just that for Laclau this is a point of celebration. Those on the wrong end of class struggle may have cause to disagree. It appears that the category of discourse collapses all other distinctions; the economy is as discursive as ideology. The difficulty with Laclau’s post-Marxism, however, is that it has struggled to develop a conception of the economic away from his rejection of Marx’s essentialist notion of the economy (Devenney, 2002: 18).

Devenney contends that post-Marxism’s loss of its critique of the economy should be treated symptomatically: it is not a contemporary aberration to be resolved with better application of the theory, as Devenney treats it but, rather, an indication of a structural impossibility within post-Marxism with regard to the impossibility of political economy and class struggle. If traditional Marxism, and as we shall see, Žižek, attributed a causal positioning to class struggle and political economy, this cannot be held within a discursive approach. Laclau’s theory of hegemony allows for an element to hold a determining position but this cannot be determined a priori – rather it is achieved through a battle for hegemony. Without this prioritising of the economy, Marxism loses much of its political edge.

Laclau’s position reminds us of the 1970s feminist slogan, ‘The personal is political’ and its infamous rejoinder ‘the personal is personal too, so piss off’. Yes, the economy is political but it is also economic. Just because the economy is always political does not mean that politics is equivalent to economics. Rather, the economy is always the political economy. We shall speak more to this matter in Chapter Six when we consider Žižek’s Lacanian critique of economy, determinism, and of causality.

Laclau’s (non)conception of capitalism and his rejection of any special status (or, indeed, content) to Marxism or class struggle leaves him with an overly optimistic, even naive, notion of political performance. Perhaps because of this, Laclau’s work remains abstract;– by contrast to Žižek, Laclau is not known for his detailed elaboration of actually existing politics. Indeed, in a recent heated dialogue with Žižek, Laclau accuses the former of ‘waiting for the Martians’ in a reference to Žižek’s desire to reinstall the category of class struggle (Laclau, 2006: 657). In response, Žižek states that waiting for Martians is the perfect way to describe Laclau’s theory of hegemony. The difference between Laclau and his own work, however, is that; “I[Žižek] (am supposed to) believe in real Martians, while he knows that the place of Martians is forever empty, so that all we can do is invest empirical agents with ‘Martian value’”(Žižek, 2008a: 294).

Finally, despite an initial affinity and endorsement of psychoanalysis, particularly in regards to the institutionalisation of lack in the struggle for hegemony, Laclau has struggled to integrate his reading of discourse with the materiality of psychoanalysis. As a consequence, it is difficult to conceptualise why universal signifiers would have any more hold over the subject than particular elements – an issue I shall respond to in some detail in the following chapter (see also Jason Glynos & Stavrakakis, 2003; Laclau, 2003; Stavrakakis, 2007).

In response to these criticisms, Laclau has subsequently moved away from Mouffe and radical democracy to a form of politics which focuses moren upon the potential for identification, rather than differentiation, provided by his conception of contingency. Laclau’s contemporary thought attempts to construct a theory of populism and ‘the construction of the people’ (Laclau, 2005, 2006), a strategy that has moved away from the institutionalisation of lack, to focus primarily on the role of affective identifications in the determination of hegemony. For Laclau, populism is a ‘pure’ form of politics, a politics which coincides with his theory of hegemony. There are few remnants, however, of the reliance upon contingency which dominated his conception of radical democracy. Instead democracy now accounts for one ‘moment’ within populist discourse.

Laclau conceives of populism as a neutral movement, like that of hegemony, as opposed to the proto-fascism attributed to it by liberals. Laclau prefers populism to class struggle because it keeps open the space of power rather than offering a privileged content as the general equivalent of all other struggles. Nonetheless, although Laclau contends that populism exists only in form without suggesting any content, like democracy the very form of its instantiation requires a minimal production of content. This political content consists of a construction of the people as a political subject, giving them, as Žižek’s contends, ‘Martian Value’. Just as Laclau opined that society does not exist, neither do the people. As such any construction of the people is a hegemonic one, requiring the exclusion of an antagonistic enemy from the chain of equivalence. In this way, Žižek suggests, not only is fascism a form of populism – ‘Jew’ is the ultimate signifier of lack constructed to fill the lack in the big Other – but populism entails a naturalisation and a potential suspension of the political (Žižek, 2008a:276-285).

Perhaps a more symptomatic example of Laclau’s understanding of populism comes from a 2010 report of British football hooligans uniting to protest against Islam. Normally composed of violently opposed groups associated with individual clubs – the groups included the Cardiff City Soul Crew and Bolton Wanderers Cuckoo Boys – the hooligans have begun protesting together under the title ‘English Defence League’, becoming mobilised against the presence of Islamic religion within the United Kingdom (Briggs, 2010). Here we have otherwise opposed groups – what Laclau would call particular elements – forming a chain of equivalence under an empty signifier ‘English Defence League’ in a battle for hegemony over the meaning of ‘British’.

To summarise, Laclau’s descriptive ontology has remained the same but his politics have flipped from the negative to the positive. Both radical democracy and populism rely upon a constitutive impossibility within linguistic structure. This point of impossibility signals the empty place of universality; the element which comes to hold this position is regarded as universal. For the early Laclau, politics should be directed towards holding this place open to allow the inherent dislocatory freedom of language to operate. By contrast, Laclau’s populism now suggests that the key task of any political movement is to hold the place of hegemony. This move suggests a radical transition from the politics of lack to the politics of jouissance, although Laclau does not use the term, which we shall expand upon in the next chapter before considering its political connotations in Chapters Four and Five.

Populism, at least in the sense in which it is practiced by politicians like Hugo Chavez, provides some hope for the hungry by mobilising resources around their plight; it certainly provides a feasible sense of politics, a politics which ‘work’. Nonetheless in doing so, it falls prey to the same factors that plagued Laclau’s conception of hegemony and radical democracy; an ethical deficit and an inability to consider capitalism in any detail. Moreover, although his notion of populism appears a more powerful political device, in relying upon the positioning of an antagonism to create ‘the people’, Laclau appears to be returning to the same positivising sense of the social against which he initially rallied. Populism may reject the historical naturalism of the revolutionary subject but in accepting that the place of the ‘people’ can and should be held, Laclau’s politics are not markedly different from forms of Marxism before the discursive turn; populism is Marxism without the economy.

Thus, whilst Laclau’s political applications of his theory of hegemony – in both its radical democratic and populist guises – is an effective form of politics across a limit range, his work does not restore Marxism in any manner which provides a response to the contradictions of the global economy. Although Laclau’s attempt to restore the dimension of universality to Marxist discourse should be welcomed, his politics, whether radical democracy or populism, operate through the exclusion of class struggle and the economy. Laclau’s work may mark an advance on the contingent ethics of particularity and difference that characterise the divergent realm of postmodernity but it has not been able to compensate for the losses associated with the rejection of historical materialism. In rejecting economic determinism, Laclau has rejected economy altogether and in doing so no longer engages with global capitalism. Instead Laclau’s work reads as a critique of the difficulties of the politics of modernity. By contrast, interactions between psychoanalysis and Marxism have tended to engage with political economy. Moreover, psychoanalysis, particularly in its Lacanian variety, has been able to return to materiality in its reading of the discursive turn.

Psycho-Marxism

Since its development, psychoanalysis – with its focus upon the unconscious, repression, sexuality, desire, and the death drive as the destructive core of humanity – has had a major impact on social theory. An engagement with psychoanalysis has enlarged understandings of ideology, of subjectivity, of the role of culture, and of enjoyment in politics and the relationship between the individual and society (Elliott, 2005: 175). Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) exemplified the use of psychoanalysis as a sociological pursuit as Freud developed an understanding of the manner in which the demands of civilised society required a level of repression in the subject that is expressed in a destructive manner[13]. I shall explore this more in Chapter Four.

Freud was re-read by Lacan – who maintained he was only supplementing Freud’s work –reworking psychoanalysis in light of Saussure’s structural linguistics, famously stating that the unconscious is structured like a language (Lacan, 2006: 416) By this Lacan meant that ‘language, as a system of differences, constitutes the subject’s repressed desire’ (ibid.: 182). In this sense, unconscious desire, like language, constitutes an intersubjective space between and within individual subjects (ibid.: 183). Moreover, intersubjectivity – with the impossibilities associated with its constitution as a differential linguistic system – offers the mediating background for subjectivity. As social theorist Anthony Elliot (2004: 1) states:

For many, the theoretical advantages of Lacan’s Freud concerned, above all, his inflation of the role of language in the construction of the psyche, an inflation which happened to fit hand in glove with the ‘linguistic turn’ of the social sciences.

Lacanian theory, it seemed, had come along at just the right moment, speaking to the analytic dilemmas that came to be associated with postmodernism whilst responding to the problematic to which postmodernism became a response [14]. Against the postmodernists but within the linguistic turn, Lacanian psychoanalysis achieved an alternative hegemony by responding to several of the problems which haunted postmodernism. In particular, Lacanian thought sought to rehabilitate the categories of subjectivity, structure and the body, each of which shall be expanded on in much more detail in the following chapter. Moreover, through the rejuvenation of these concepts, Lacanian theory offered a new way to read Marxism and its relationship to the discursive turn.

The difficulties of combining psychoanalysis and Marxism are intertwined with the collective hope and traumatic failure of Leftist emancipation. Following the dis-ease with the halted progress of Marxist practice and theory, psychoanalysis has been long looked upon both as the saviour and the failure of radical Leftist politics. Yet no stable theoretical fusion has developed between the two traditions, and contemporary theory has come to regard the notion of collective emancipation as rather pathetically passé. Instead of hope, theoretical Leftism holds onto the contradictory fetishes of the necessity of the grand-narrative of capitalism and the contingency of language and culture, between which lies a theoretical waste land where only the brave or unaware dare to stride.

Psychoanalysis was initially attached to Marxism as part of the cultural turn which sought to explain the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in response to the continued presence and development of capitalism. In this initial relationship, characterised by the Freudian Marxism of Wilhelm Reich and the Frankfurt School theorists, psychoanalysis was used to add a theory of subjectivity to Marxism in the face of the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. These theories of subjectivity focused mainly on the role of culture in mediating the effects of capitalism and preventing a true class consciousness from emerging.

If this could be described as the first phase of ‘Psycho-Marxism’ the second phase was dominated by Louis Althusser’s structuralist revision of Marxism (Miklitsch, 1998: 85). Althusser did not seek to fuse together the two discourses but, rather, take advantage of what he believed to be a structural homology between class struggle and the unconscious (Özselcuk & Madra, 2007: 86). Althusser’s return to Marx through psychoanalysis was the first to be dominated by Lacan, rather than Freud. As such, it cultivated a re-reading of Freud as well, framed in Lacanian terms. Althusser was perhaps the first to politicise Lacanian thought in his reworking of Marxism and ideology. Using Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage to exemplify (mis)recognition in ideology through what he called ‘interpellation’, Althusser’s work had a strong influence upon efforts to rework both Marxist determinism and the role of culture and ideology in maintaining the dominance of capital.

The movement from Freud to Lacan proved to be both a threat and opportunity for Marxist theory. Lacan’s emphasis on the structuring role, and ultimate failure, of language dismissed the foundations of Marxist essentialism and previously assumed forms of political action associated with communism. Communism may have remained as a reference point but the essentialist justifications had long disappeared, dispatched to a theoretical attic to allow for occasional bouts of nostalgia. Importantly, however, this dimension was not dismissed altogether. Althusser and those that followed remained committed to Marxism for a reason, although others, such as Laclau, may not have been so sure. The problem was that while psychoanalysis did not fall prey to the transgressive particularism of postmodernity, it did share a deep suspicion of politics, utopianism and revolution. If critics have found psychoanalysis woefully inadequate as a political touchstone, then traditionalist Marxists certainly did not find it a suitable torch bearer.

Although Marxism and psychoanalysis share several theoretical similarities – a committed engagement to reducing the gap between theory and practice, a similar notion of causality (in terms of class struggle and the unconscious respectively) and a radically divergent focus on generating change – in both their underlying ontology and optimism towards the prospects of political change they proved radically incompatible. For some, such as social theorist Sean Homer (2001), this makes any attempt to develop psychoanalytic Marxism as a singular practice a foolish pursuit. As such, he claims that Žižek’s “Lacanism appears to rule out the possibility of any orthodox ‘understanding’ of Marxism” (ibid.: 7).

Resonating with Homer’s sentiments, psychoanalysis in relation to politics remains intensely controversial. This is the case even though – as Stavrakakis (2007: 1) reports – it has become second in influence only to analytical liberalism[15]. Lacan is accepted as a theorist of cinema or sexuality but not of politics. Indeed, Elliot (2004:2), contends; “At its bleakest, the Lacanian symbolic was deployed to underscore the inevitability of social order and political domination as a fundamental state of human desire”. Moreover, Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey (Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2005, 2006), in relation to Žižek’s appropriation of Marxism, argue that the negativity inherent in Lacanian thought simply ends up reproducing the antagonism, domination and violence of capitalism, the very things they believe Leftist politics should seek to revoke.

Likewise, Homer (1996: 109) states that although psychoanalysis can engage in a “continuing critical dialogue with political and social theory”, its constitutive inability to develop a positive sense of ideology means that more reactionary positions will fill this gap and for this reason psychoanalytic discourse is an inappropriate partner for Leftist political practice. Furthermore, Elizabeth Bellamy (1993) comes to argue that whilst psychoanalysis has tremendous analytic potential, it does not offer any more fruitful opportunities for political action then had already been developed in the discursive turn. Psychoanalysis, it seemed, explained the domination of capitalism and the hopelessness of culture a little too well.

Much – if not all – of this criticism is directed at Žižek. It is directed at Žižek not only because he is the most significant scholar in the discourse but also because his form of politics relies heavily upon a reading of Marxism that both re-establishes and circumvents the central currents of traditional Marxist politics – most notably class struggle and communism. Žižek’s interpretation of Marxism operates as an antagonistic answer to the question of universality and truth. Without wanting to re-occupy any nostalgic sense of Marxist essentialism, he demands that the Left respond to the dominance of capital.

Žižek embodies the impossibilities of Leftist politics because whilst his work grapples with the same difficulties of representation that have brought the downfall of traditional Left (essentialist) politics, he maintains that the Left must not abandon the political terrain either by giving way to the dilemmas of representation or losing sight of the economy. As such, although couched within a reading of both psychoanalysis and Marxism, much of the remainder of this thesis entails a reading of the difficulties, challenges and possibilities offered by Žižek’s work. If in responding to the crisis of global sustainability we had reason to again turn to Marxism, in our reading of the difficulties of approaching Marxism after the discursive turn, we have cause to turn to Žižek.

As such, the reference to Marxism becomes largely implicit in the remainder of the thesis. Here I am not so much concerned with an overt discursive rejuvenation of Marxist politics – although this might well occur through the course and consequences of Žižek’s work – but, rather, the manner in which Žižek’s use of the Marxist tradition, in particular his return to the economy, class struggle, and communism, acts as a response to contemporary capitalism. Ultimately, the prospects for Marxist theory and political practice are beyond the scope of this project which instead focus upon a response to the material contradictions of global capitalism. If I began this response by reference to Marxism, this chapter has shown the difficulties of reviving Marxist political practice. Thus, whilst remaining within Marxism discourse and considering its value as a political resource, the identification of both the problems faced by Marxism and in responding to capitalism, has caused a turn to psychoanalysis, rather than Marxism, as the prime theoretical reference point.

Thus, having introduced the dilemmas of post-Marxism and the psychoanalytic response, it is now time to turn to psychoanalysis itself in order to properly consider Žižek’s work. Although I have thus far introduced psychoanalytic discourse as a positive contributor to Marxism, the situation is far more complex. Through its conception of symbolic castration, psychoanalysis allows for a reading of the discursive turn which is rooted in the body. In doing so it is better able to materialise discourse and explain the apparent fixity of the symbolic order. Moreover, primarily through Žižek’s work, a return to the economy is possible without reverting to a strict determinism (this shall be the subject of Chapter Six). In doing so, we see that following the rejection of historical materialism and the political vacuum which followed, psychoanalysis adds to the explanatory power of Marxism, providing an understanding of the difficulty of shifting capitalism and hence the possibilities for doing so without the inevitability of history.

As such, the psychoanalytic reading of Marxism suggests the possibility of restoring Marxism as a political force in order to provide a response to the global sustainability problematic. Conversely, whilst this ‘psycho-Marxism’ may be able to better explain why the contradictions of global capitalism prove to be obdurate, in the next chapter we shall see that no form of politics – certainly in terms of the material reproduction of shared social life – stems naturally from the combination of Lacan and Marx. If historical materialism produced not only a reading of capitalism but the inevitable progression of the revolutionary subject, Žižek’s dialectical materialism provides little such confidence. Indeed, Lacanian theory may act as the ultimate dismissal of traditional Marxist politics, leaving the question of politics and normativity in the rebellious hands of psychoanalytic discourse and its central troublemaker, Žižek.

[1] This is not a problem specific to Marxism; today’s strongest public critics of globalisation – Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and John Pilger most notably – seem to have the same sense of objective emancipation.

[2] As such, perhaps the important question in our consideration of the relationship between Marxism and essentialism is, ‘Which Marx?’ One cannot have access to a singular Marx but must instead construct a Marx through the discursive lens of our time. Indeed, the Marx to which we are responding here may not be Karl Marx himself but, rather, the hegemonic forms of Marxism. These constructions of Marx range from the strict analytic or scientific Marxian readings of history to the Stalinist Communist regimes of the 20^th century.

[3] By this Derrida did not strictly mean that there is no materiality outside of textuality but, rather, that every text can only be interpreted through another text not by reference to an outside referent.

[4] This is not to degrade the political importance of representation, only to suggest that representation does not define existence.

[5] Given Marx’s own rejection of morality, there is something quite comedic about this normative crisis which followed the downfall of the hegemony of Marxism.

[6] This is the paradox of the death of ‘God’, otherwise known as the transcendental signifier. If the original fear of the theists (linguistic or otherwise) was that the dismissal of this guarantee would mean the end of order, then perhaps the opposite has occurred; we have invented new signifiers to fill this lack. Moreover, because they are self-imposed they have an even stronger disciplinary effect. We see this change in the move from a sovereign authority to the all-seeing discipline of panoptical control; if God is dead, then nothing, rather than everything, is permitted..

[7] For instance the concept of ‘tree’ collapses a number of different types of trees under a singular meaning. Likewise, the signifier ‘Women’ is repressive because it ignores the difference between different categories of Women e.g. Black women, black working women, black working homosexual Women, all of which are themselves are repressive concepts…

[8] Here Laclau contrasts emancipation and freedom by reference to transcendentalism and dislocation. Freedom occurs at the point of dislocation from the existing symbolic order. Freedom is not a place but, rather, an action. By contrast, for Laclau emancipation remains within a transcendental construction of a place of freedom that we might reach (1996: 18-19). This construction is confluent with a number of ethical positions after the discursive turn – Lacanian psychoanalysis one of them – it appears to have little in from those whose suffering is more than symbolic.

[9] Bauman, however, goes beyond this, suggesting that the postmodern subject is aware of truth itself. If we can consider this to be the case, it could only be a cynical recognition of truth – I shall discuss the structure of cynical reason in Chapter Seven.

[10] Identity politics, rather than being an exemplary element of postmodernism rather embodies the position of cultural studies between modernism and postmodernism. Identity politics, although a form of particularly concurrent with postmodernism, is an attempt to establish an essential unity that is quite opposed to the celebration of difference which characterises postmodernity. Nonetheless, in terms of political positioning, identity politics and cultural studies have much in common

[11] Moreover, no hegemonic mode of politics has developed from postmodern thought. This is no specific reason to discount it but it is worth noting that politics in the United States is divided between the pragmatist Democrats and fundamentalist Republicans rather than any sense of the postmodern. Postmodernism exists but as a form of cultural practice and commodification. For this reason, postmodern culture can be considered as a hegemonic historical response to the impossibility of class struggle – an impossibility I shall expand upon in Chapter Six.

[12] ‘Beyond the Positivity of the Social’ is the title of the most influential chapter in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, signalling a re-reading of hegemony and introducing the concepts of dislocation and antagonism.

[13] This is a line of thought further developed by Herbert Marcuse in particular (1956).

[14] Lacan himself was working contemporarously with postmodernism but his work has since come to be seen as a response to postmodernity.

[15] Elliot too remarks, “Indeed, for some considerable period of time, it seemed that theory just wasn’t theory unless the name Lacan was referenced” (2004: 1).

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The Body of the Discursive Turn

Posted on May 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Although Freud developed psychoanalysis as a clinical means of curing psychological pathologies, psychoanalysis after Lacan can be seen as another response to the discursive turn in both its clinical and socio-political forms. Following Saussure, for Lacan it was “the world of words that creates the world of things” (2006: 229) such that the subject did not use language but is rather constituted in language[1]. Lacanian theory thus suggests that the human subject is fundamentally alienated from within: language, the very stuff of our thoughts, feelings and (ego)identity comes from outside, from something Other that comes to invade, and define, our inner life (Fink, 1995: 7).

The seat of this inner life is the unconscious, which is both formed by language and structured like a language; it has a formal grammar which unfolds like a chain (Ibid.: 8). The unconscious then becomes, according to Lacan, “the discourse of the Other” (Lacan, 2006: 265), acting as the presence of the Other within the body. In this sense the human subject does not use language but is rather used by language through the unconscious discourse of the Other (Fink, 1995: 14). Moreover, the subject of language is alienated not only by the differential separation of the concept from the thing but also the material separation of the body from itself, otherwise known as symbolic castration. The human, unlike its fellow animals, cannot purely react upon instinct or enjoy its body. Instead, upon entry into the symbolic order, the subject loses access to total materiality. Thus, for Lacan in contrast to Marx, alienation is neither contingent nor political but, rather, an ahistorical condition of being.

Lacanian psychoanalysis, therefore, offers an alternative interpretation of the discursive turn within which it is part. Through the restoration of the salience of materialism, many of difficulties I assigned to postmodernity in the previous chapter can be rethought. Against the differential contingency of the signifier, psychoanalysis emphasises the underlying fixity of being through a (partial) return to materiality of the body and the signifier.

Postmodernism has tended to reject essentialism, fixity, and emancipation as if they are all one mode of meta-narrative illusion. In some ways the postmodernists are correct – in the absence of any meta-narratives or essential foundations life is inherently fragmented and contingent. Where the post-modernists are misguided, however, is in dismissing the notion of a ‘human condition’ altogether, as if it implied a naturality that no longer applies after the turn to language. Rather, the ultimate lack of foundation that constitutes both the subject and the human community in language is the human condition: fragmentation at the hands of language which dominates meaning and human relations but is exceeded by a surplus materiality, both in terms of what Lacan calls jouissance, and the material necessity of reproducing the human animal.

The key error committed in much of the thought considered to be postmodern is that the consideration of the fragmentation which envelops language – the body, the subject (if the subject is given a presence) and human community – places the very existence of these objects in doubt. Conversely, Lacanian theory suggests that whilst language produces a fragmentation to social life from which there is no possibility of recovering, an excessive, materialist, remainder of existence persists. This materiality is not the determining stuff of historical materialism but, rather, a dialectical materialism evident only in the failure of language. Where Marx suggested a commonality to human existence based around the shared conditions of production, for Lacan intersubjectivity is based around the shared grip of language and its remainder, jouissance. If for postmodernists all that was solid had melted, Lacan suggested that the signifier does not melt social life into thin air but, rather, into a bodily substance called jouissance which ensures that politics is not just a matter of signification.

Here, the human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess: lack in the sense of the negativity at the heart of being caused by the subject’s essential separation from jouissance through the operation of the signifier, excess, because of the compensation the subject receives for this sacrifice, a surplus-jouissance located in the object cause of desire (objet a). Žižek, following Lacan and Freud before him, defines this movement between lack and excess as the death drive; being is never just being, such that; “Human life is never ‘just life’: humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things” (Žižek, 2006d: 62).

As such, by conceiving of the problem of signification as one of symbolic castration – an issue as much of the body as the psyche – Lacanian theory has been able to restore structure, materialism, and fixity as key elements of theory once lost by Marxism to postmodernity and the discursive turn. In restoring these dimensions, Lacanian psychoanalysis – through Žižek in particular – has been able to rehabilitate Marxism as an explanatory device beyond any deterministic sense of history. What it has not been able to restore, however, is the emancipatory demand at the heart of the Marxist approach. In terms of the loss of this demand. Indeed, psychoanalytic theory – including its Freudian forbearer – can be considered perhaps more sceptical about the prospects of revolution and emancipation than postmodern thought. If postmodern ethics hold some optimism about human freedom – although dismissive of the universality required for widespread political change – psychoanalysis holds no hope; the death drive is not a concept for the sunshine theorists of the human mind.

For Lacanians, revolution entails rotation around a central point of impossibility rather than a reinvention of the wheel itself. As we shall see throughout the remainder of this thesis, this is not the last word on the role of psychoanalysis in politics. It does, however, suggest a vital question: If Lacanian theory is so deeply uneasy about the prospects of progressive politics, why should it be taken to offer any response to the material contradictions of the global economy? This question is complicated by the application of psychoanalysis to Marxist discourse. Communism, class struggle and the revolutionary subject appear quite divorced from desire, fantasy and the essential stability of the sinthome.

This disjuncture between the domains of impossibility and ‘positive politics’ is not easily bridged and produces analytic complications that reverberate throughout the remainder of this thesis. I shall argue that Lacanian psychoanalysis, as embodied by Žižek’s work, provides the most powerful strategic response to that disjuncture as it plays out in the context of problems around global sustainability. In order to come to this conclusion, one informed from a Marxist analysis of capitalism as much as the psychoanalytic clinic, we shall traverse questions of ethics, politics, economy, communism and utopia.

The focus of this particular chapter is twofold: primarily I detail the manner in which psychoanalysis has been a response to the discursive turn. Of particular interest is a consideration of the challenges this response presents for the practice of both Lacanian and Marxian politics. Furthermore, in this reflection I shall discuss the theoretical basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis that will determine much of the basis for future argumentation. As such, I shall consider the dialectical relationship between lack and surplus, embodied in Lacan’s notions of the Real and jouissance. Such a deliberation requires further development of desire, ideological fantasy, the symptom and subjectivity, along with the emblematic objet a[2].

In response we shall argue that the value of Lacanian psychoanalysis lies in its return to the materiality of discourse, which implies the existence of fixity to being, rather than the contingency which was the focus of postmodernity. Conversely, Žižek suggests that a re-reading of Marxism through Lacan results in a rejection of (the fantasy of) Marxian communism and the revolutionary subject. Thus, while Marxism and psychoanalysis make a powerful couplet, this fusion is particularly troubling for any sense of politics inspired by Marx. In considering the dilemmas inherited by Marxist politics after the discursive turn and symbolic castration, the chapters which follow focus on the political connotations of psychoanalysis, before returning to the economy and possible responses to its inherent contradictions.

Symbolic Castration, or, the Materiality of Language

Like postmodernity, Lacanian psychoanalysis responds to the dilemmas of the discursive turn, in particular the ontological side of the problematic of representation; that language has no outside from which to grasp itself. For the Lacanian subject, language as its own limit means that the subject has no access to the pure animal materiality of the body nor has any ability to access its situation outside of language. This is the crucial (materialist) paradox of humanity; to be human is to be cursed with both metaphysical concerns and moral anxiety, yet have no perch from which to consider these conceptual impositions. If all that is required is a sufficiently removed perch from which to objectivity view humanity – and the likes of Sachs may think they have found this perch (and called it economics[3]) – much of history entails a struggle to designate this privileged point of objectivity. This struggle, moreover, has mostly involved the battle to remove those who stand in its way.

The discursive turn produced a revolution in the search for a perch; the only possibility came within language itself through what modernity called reflexivity and postmodernity the last illusion (see Bauman, 1993). Late modernity came to suggest that the problem of objectivity lay within us not from some impossibly divorced vantage point. Psychoanalysis, however, was the bearer of bad news; language, as the discourse of the Other, not only alienates the subject from itself, creating a lack of being within the subjective realm but the objective sphere of the Other is lacking in itself.

For Lacan, lack was the precondition for any notion of the human condition; language fundamentally alienates the subject from the body. Moreover, Lack is not simply nothingness but has an ontological status beyond nothingness; it does not only imply negativity but also excessive attempts to compensate for this negativity. For Lacan, lack has the same status as an empty set – emptiness implying the possibility of fullness. Lack thus has the status of something missing, the necessarily awkwardly represented ‘presence of absence’.

Understanding Lacan’s conception of lack is made more difficult by the inadequate translation of the French signifier ‘Manqué’ as used by Lacan. Manqué is translated to lack in English because of the grammatical inadequacy of the English verb ‘to miss’ (Fink, 1995: 52). Missing, more than lacking, implies both the lack of something and attempts to regain what is lost. These attempts (the ‘missing’ of the object) characterises the operation of desire; a ‘lack of being’ which generates a ‘want to be’ (ibid.: 103). For Ernst Bloch (1986), this dialectic exchange between lack and longing is evidence of the utopian demand at the heart of being[4]. Lack, Bloch suggests, cannot be articulated other than by imagining its fulfilment. In psychoanalytic terms, lack is the performative presence of absence.

The dialectic of language – of symbolic castration and the presence of absence – is such that the human being operates as a being of desire rather than biological need. Symbolic castration – the birth of the subject through their entry into the symbolic order – creates a division in the body which allows for jouissance; the signifier is both the cause and the limit to jouissance (Levy-Stokes, 2001:101). According to US psychoanalytic theorist Adrian Johnston, Lacan’s re-reading of Freud switched the focus of castration from the anatomy to the symbolic whereby the drives are alienated by the mediating affect of language (2005: 323). Just as Freud had suggested that the citizen must sacrifice bodily instinct – the drives – to become part of civilisation, Lacan contended that the human condition is marked by the internal imposition of the alien demands of the symbolic order. Importantly, where Freud considered the repression of bodily expression to be caused by political civilisation, Lacan conceived symbolic castration as an ahistorical necessity which has led to the occurrence of politics.

Symbolic castration means that desire becomes a biological property of the human animal, not one the infant is born with but, rather, one which impinges on the subject on account of its forced entry into language. The human being, like any animal, is subject to a number of biological needs. Indeed, Eagleton (2003:4) quotes Nietzsche in this regard as stating that; “whenever anybody speaks crudely of a human being as a belly with two needs and a head with one, the lover of knowledge should listen carefully”.

Need, or perhaps instinct, does exist but it is killed and over-written by the signifier (Fink, 1995: 12). We could argue, as does Terry Eagleton (2003) that this re-writing, and all the structural inconsistencies that come with it, is the nature of the human animal. If so, the human condition is of a paradoxical nature: the individual body is born with biological needs that are dependent upon their expression, recognition, and structural support through an Other that does not exist, yet provokes a distance between the body and itself.

I willl now move to the two concepts that dominate Žižek’s (Lacanian) conception of (dialectical) materialism, the Real and jouissance, in order to explain this paradoxical nature and its relationship to symbolic castration and the turn to language. In the section which follows I shall turn to the former, seeking to understand the manner in which the Real conceives of structure, materiality and the essential fixity of discourse.

The Lack of the Real

The Real can be most broadly defined as both that which resists symbolisation and the very distorting effect which prevents access to that distortion, both the presence of lack and that which provokes attempts to fill that absence. The Real is one of three Lacanian registers – the other two being the symbolic and the imaginary – which make up the rings of the Borromean knot. Within Lacan’s lifetime, it was the other two registers which dominated psychoanalysis; the imaginary was informed by the ‘Mirror-stage’ of the early Lacan and the symbolic through Lacan’s focus on semiotics, the signifier and the unconscious. The Real only came to the fore in Lacan’s latter work, and has been increasingly prevalent in readings of Lacan inspired by Žižek, who focuses much more of Lacan’s later work[5].

The Real is, according to Eagleton (2009: 141) “an enigmatic concept, as well as … an analogous one, working at several different levels simultaneously”. It is because of this simultaneous operation – one more akin to music than science[6] – that the Real is such a difficult term to grasp[7]. Certainly the Real is not reality in itself, some pure unadulterated access to materiality or biology. Rather reality, along with materiality, is a response to the Real. The difficulty is that the opposite is also true; the Real is a response to materiality that is a part of ‘reality’. For this reason considering a definition is a delicate affair[8].

The Real does not persist in and of itself: the effect of the Real plays out within a variety of different discursive positions such that one can only speak of the Real in the singular in terms of an abstract form. In terms of its instantiation in language, we can only represent different modalities of the Real[9]. Therefore we can refer to the Real in terms of desire or drive, in the operation of fantasy and objet a or in the antagonistic points of exclusion which sustain a discourse. Indeed, as I shall discuss in Chapter Six, Žižek suggests that the operation of global capitalism can be considered a modality of the (symbolic) Real.

Žižek introduces this enlarged notion of the Real, involving a symbolic Real, in the foreword to the 2^nd edition of For they Know Not What They Do (2002a: xi-xii). This distinction came as a response to Žižek’s own criticism of his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), against which he claims he endorsed a “quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan” and the Real. That is, Žižek argues that his reading of Lacan implicitly constructed the Real as a point of failure with the consequence that ethics involves the acceptance of failure and finitude. Instead, Žižek insists upon the Real as not only symbolic failure but as a positive point of excess. In order to do this, Žižek contends that the Lacanian triad of ‘Real-Imaginary-Symbolic’ is reproduced within itself. That is, we can have an imaginary form of the Real as well as a symbolic form of the imaginary.

In a similar vein to Žižek’s enlargement of the concept of the Real, Bruce Fink suggests the Real can be considered as two modalities, the Real ‘before the letter’ (R₁) and the Real that is ‘after the letter’ (R₂). R₁ is the signifier given to that beyond language, an illusionary time and space generated by signification itself such that R₁ appears to be without absence. It is only R₂ that cuts up R₁ through the generation of ‘reality’ in the symbolic order. These cuts occur because the symbolic realm cannot fully grasp what is beyond its limits, creating a gap between reality and the Real. In essence R₁ exists only as an absence but this absence is given a name and thus an existence; without the operation of naming in the symbolic, R₁ would only be felt as an absence (Fink, 1995: 24 -25). The Real before the letter is thus an original trauma, the fantasmatic point of symbolic castration that turns the pleasures of animal into the torturous being of man. It is a phenomenon best described by Eagleton (2009:143-144) when he states:

We can grasp this alien phenomenon only by constructing it backwards, so to speak, from its effects – from how it acts as a drag on our discourse, as astronomers can sometimes identify a celestial body only because of its warping effect on the space around it…. This void is the precondition for the order’s effective functioning but can never fully be represented there.

Conversely, because absence can only by felt through the failure of presence, the Real cannot simply be considered to be external to symbolisation either in the form of R₁or R₂. The Real is not just what is excluded from the symbolic but, rather, has what Lacan termed an ‘extimate’ relationship with the symbolic order, being both within and outside the symbolic at the same time. Thus, although the Real resists symbolisation, it is not alien to the symbolic.

The gap between reality and the Real is strictly internal to reality – there is no reality without the Real. This is the case for R₁ because it establishes the very limits of symbolisation but also for R₂. R₂operates as the factor that distorts symbolisation from within; it is the disavowed ‘X’ that warps symbolisation in a manner in which we cannot be aware at the time of ‘understanding’. Thus, the Real is not simply a time or space before/outside language (this would be R₁). It is also the cuts within the symbolic order – that which cannot be symbolised from within a certain ideological constellation. What may be Real to me may not be to you; what is unsymbolisable within one matrix is not within another. Debate over the possible absence of a transcendental God may be have a Real affect on a pious church-goer – such that they feel anxious and destabilised by even such a thought – yet be a mundane signification for an atheist. Moreover, the presentation of a signifier may give it a Real presence. Poverty statistics, as an illustration, have such a ubiquitous status that they are no longer disturbing to many but coming face-to-face with hunger and suffering much more so.

Through this understanding of the Real, we are now in the position to assert a Lacanian response to the deadlock between modernist essentialism and post-modern fragmentation. Lacanian psychoanalysis rejects the former because of the failure of language to fully grasp and positivise that which it represents prevents the construction of any such universal essentialist positions. Any such attempts can only exist by way of exclusion – a point we shall build upon in the following section. The rejection of all encompassing universality does not lead, however, to fragmentation and particularly characteristic of postmodernity. Rather, although the universal is impossible, it is also necessary.

Žižek asserts in this same manner that plurality – and he includes false essentialisms in this category – is always a response to some excluded Real element which is simultaneously both a hidden essence and surface appearance. Thus, rather than choosing between universality and particularity, Žižek contends that both are historical responses to the impossible Real. This does not mean the Real is ahistorical but, rather, always takes an historical form. For this reason, Žižek contends that psychoanalysis is able to subvert the contingency-structure dualism. In response to a question from Judith Butler (Butler, Laclau, & Žižek, 2000: 5) in regards to the apparent tension between the (false) transcendentalism of the Lacanian Real and the contingency of hegemonic identification, Žižek states; “The opposition between an ahistorical bar of the Real and thoroughly contingent historicity is therefore a false one: it is the very ‘ahistorical’ bar as the internal limit of the process of symbolisation that sustains the space of historicity” (Žižek, 2000b: 214, original emphasis).

In this sense psychoanalytic theory provides a distinctive step-change from both modernist and postmodernist ontologies. If modernism had spent much of its history trying to grasp, represent and tie down what Lacan called the Real, postmodernism had given up on the whole pursuit, preferring to drift in the semblances of appearances which are but a response to the persistence impossibility of the Real. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, rejects both these approaches in favour of what Stavrakakis calls an ‘encircling of the Real’ which entails the infinite process of considering the effect of absence upon presence and identifying the central cause that drives the production of structure (Stavrakakis, 1999: 130). We cannot, however, introduce a strict divide between cause and structure or causality – one cannot operate without the other. Moreover, as we noted earlier in this section, the Real exists in different modalities, from primordial trauma to the friction that exists between two contradictory discourses. This latter point has significant consequences for the practice of psychoanalytic politics and will thus be the focus of the next section.

The Real between Discourses

Discourse exists as chains of differentially connected signifiers such that the meaning of one is established by reference to another. These chains establish a logical connection in which signifiers form combinations which make sense only by reference to the remainder of the ideological chain. In this conception, the discursive system[10] exists as over-lapping chains that may or may not cross at certain points – points which Laclau labels ‘antagonisms’. In this sense the Real is still, as Lacan (2006: 388) stated, the “domain of whatever subsists outside symbolisation” yet parts of this domain can be symbolised in an alternative discourse and remain absent in another. This is not to suggest that discursive chains are always incommensurable but, rather, that terms cannot be simply transposed whilst maintaining the same meaning: certain chains of reasoning make sense only by reference to the exigencies of the signifying chain.

This circumstance occurs between Marxism and capitalist accounts of political economy. Marxism readily acknowledges that hunger and suffering are a necessary consequence of the interactions of the market. Such an acknowledgement would be a point of dislocation for capitalist political economy – it is a point that Sachs, for instance, struggles to account for – and is excluded from that discourse. Here we have a circumstance in which Marxist discourse can symbolise the operation of the Real within capitalism; a point which cannot be acknowledged within the latter[11]. Such an instance – as shall be the focus of Chapters Five and Six – allows for the effects of the Real to be mobilised in a political manner.

An example of this kind of parallel linguistic logic can be illustrated in the biological world. In January 2010, American Physicist Paul Davies argued that alien life may have co-existed since the beginning of what has become human life (Associated Press, 2010). Davies suggested that there was no necessary reason for all life on Earth to have evolved from a single origin. Instead, an ‘alien’ form of life could have developed concurrently but was unable to evolve past a certain point. Thus alien life might well exist, Davies argued, amongst currently unexplored forms of bacteria. In this case, multiple chains of life might be present on the planet, each with their own biological logic that prevents a connection between them. Moreover, each chain would have different logical impossibilities such that what is impossible within one form of life, say sexual reproduction, is part of the structure of another.

We must be careful here not to get caught up in the abstraction necessary to make this point. It is not as if discourses are self contained branches, never coming overlapping. The point, however, remains: language is not infinitely differential but, rather, is cohered into certain patterns through ideology – patterns which allow for some conceptual chains but not others. Thus, whilst the Real as R₁ is operational as the original trauma which produces discourse itself, within individual discourses unique patterns and impossibilities emerge which we have identified as a different modality of the Real – R₂[12]_.Indeed, Lacan suggests a similar logic in his concept of the four discourses – that of the hysteric, master, university and the analyst – each of which identifies a different logic of intersubjectivity.

Žižek suggests a comparable operation to the parallel universe approach to discourse analysis in his recent notion of the ‘parallax view’ – the apparent displacement of an object caused by a shift in the position of the observer. For Žižek, the philosophical twist is that;

The observed difference is not simply ‘subjective’, due to the fact that the same object which exists ‘out there’ is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently ‘mediated’, so that an epistemological shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an ‘ontological’ shift in the object itself. (Žižek, 2006d: 17)

The parallax view then produces a ‘multiplicity of symbolic perspectives’ (ibid.: 18) around an ‘unfathomable X’ – a pure difference which is an object in and of itself. A parallax produces what Kant called a ‘transcendental illusion’; the illusion that there exists a point of mediation between two discourses. This mediatory point exists only as the presence of absence, the Real. Vitally, however, the Real becomes an object itself – the parallax Real. This modality of the Real is the gap which occurs in the parallax shift from one perspective to another. If we take the biblical-postmodern discussions on morality, the parallax Real is the incommensurable gap between the discourses – that barrier which prevents direct communication between them.

Again, the Real here is that point both to which access is not possible and the obstacle itself which prevents this access (ibid.: 26). Furthermore, Žižek goes on to state that the parallax Real brings with it a revision of the standard Lacanian notion of the Real as that which always returns to its place (Lacan, 2006: 17). Rather the parallax accounts for the multiple appearances of the Real itself – that the Real can be entirely different for neo-liberal and Marxist discourse, despite each responding to the same (Real) impossibility of class struggle.

The parallax Real is then itself a 2^nd order variation of the Real: it is not the trauma of symbolic castration but, rather, the impossibilities inherent in attempts to symbolise the absence born by castration. The R₂is felt both through its absent presence – the primordial example being the Freudian slip whereby the limitations of a particular discursive structure are revealed only through the performative failure of that structure – as well as actually occurring elements of the Real that are incommensurable within an internal logic of a discourse, yet are able to be symbolised from another perspective. The key example of this process comes from the exceptional elements that each discursive perspective must exclude to establish itself as a set; every ideological formation has an exceptional blind-spot that simply cannot be included within the set if that set is to maintain its consistency. It is to these exceptions (and exclusions) that we now turn.

The Presence of the Real: On the Condition of Exceptionality

As I have noted, the Lacanian ontology suggests that the symbolic order is faced with dual pressures: a quest for the imaginary coherence of the body and the dislocatory effect of the Real. Language can never be objective – it can never be a closed system but, rather, requires the presence of other signifiers – but it is also always in the process of seeking objective closure, a process that Lacan associated with the body. The only way to achieve a fragile, ideological, objectivity this is by way of an exception to the discursive formation.

The notion of exception often causes confusion within psychoanalytic discourse. Much of this confusion comes from the conflation of different modes of exceptionality into one. This assumption stems from Lacan’s theory of sexuation; the manner in which men and women are structured differently in relation to castration and the lack of jouissance. Sexual differentiation has nothing to do with biological essence (Žižek, 1994a: 155) but is rather a structural position in regards to the cut of the signifier; it is entirely plausible to have subjects with female genitalia identifying with the masculine position[13]. From this distinction between the masculine and the feminine Lacan argued that “there is no sexual relationship”: this does not mean that sexual intercourse does not occur but, rather, there is no logical relationship between masculine and feminine positions. Not only do they represent different structural responses to castration but these responses themselves are not together compatible. As a consequence of the failure of the sexual relationship, Lacan identified sexual difference as the antagonism against which both sexuality and sociality is riven; sexual difference is the primary modality of the Real as all forms of discourse are a response to the wound of sexual difference.

Sexual difference can also be conceived of as a logical problem in relation to objectivity and exceptionality in language. The Other is lacking because it cannot complete itself – it cannot name itself within its own set. For there to be an inside there must be an exterior which designates the presence of the inside, otherwise what is internal ceases to be exclusive. By naming the inside that name then becomes part of the set and another exterior signifier is required to constitute the set. Thus, the complete Other, the complete set of signifiers cannot exist – there must be at least one exceptional signifier that names the set, thus exceeding the horizon of that set. Fink (1995: 29-30) here refers to Bertrand Russell’s example of the paradox of the catalogues of all catalogues which do not include themselves as entries. If the catalogue does not include itself within the catalogue, then the list is incomplete – it has an exception, itself. If, however, the catalogue does include itself, then it should not be included within that category .

Such a paradox is the key to Lacan’s understanding of the masculine and feminine; from there to exist a masculine set (a set in which all are included), an exception to that set must exist in order to define the presence of a set. By contrast, the feminine set includes its own exception but loses the ability to define itself as a set and becomes an infinite series.

These positions are not just logical possibilities but, rather, responses to symbolic castration; they suggest both a different relation to the phallus[14] and to jouissance. The question of the exception in relation to sexuation comes by reference to the phallus. For Lacan, the masculine is altogether subject to symbolic castration and the phallus; man is subject to jouissance of the phallus, otherwise known as symbolic jouissance (I shall turn to the question of jouissance shortly). Man can only be wholly submitted to symbolic castration by the presence of an exception that is not submitted to these conditions. According to Lacan, that exception had the status of Freud’s primordial father in Totem and Taboo; the father that has not been subject to castration and was thus able to control and enjoy women fully (Freud, 1960).

Nonetheless, the naming of the set which must necessarily exceed the set is only one of the forms of exceptionality. The other is the universal exception, otherwise known as the excluded or the concrete universal. This form of exceptionality is the form predominately used by Žižek and is the key to his theory of universality, by which he uses Hegel to read Lacan. This conception of universality and the exception is vital to the remainder of the thesis, so we shall pause to consider it in detail.

Žižek, Hegel and Universality

In the Ticklish Subject (Žižek, 1999: 100-101) Žižek suggests – and rejects – three separate positions on universality. The first is the standard, neutral and positivised universal, indifferent to its particular content; that which is universal applies to all possible circumstances. This conception of universality relies upon a singular and essential foundation and has largely been the subject of critique from the discursive turn – the first question asked of this brand of universality is, from which perspective is this universal? – the very possibility of asking this question reveals the particularity of the universal. Nonetheless, it is the image of universality assumed by the likes of Sachs and those involved in the natural sciences (or economics).

This conception of universality has been partially negated by the second alternative: universality as an illusion generated by power relations. Here the universal is neither true nor neutral but, rather, a particular reflection of the existing hegemony. Typically, this version is marked by a Marxist conception of ideology, whereby the universal is a partiality, hiding the true, universal totality of social relations. Thus, this form of universality is not postmodern; theorists of a postmodern bent tend to assert that the only possible form of universality is an illusion. By contrast, this ‘Marxist’ form of universality introduces a split into universality, between an illusionary universal and a true underlying universal.

Finally, Žižek offers the universal as empty, as contingent yet always already hegemonised by particular content. This is the version proposed by Laclau. Laclau, in contrast to the previous two positions, acknowledges that the universal is impossible – language prevents a direct or neutral correlation between the universal and particular. Nonetheless, it is in this failure that universality exists. Here, universality occurs when a signifier is abstracted to the point where it represents nothing but itself: an empty signifier. The universal itself is empty but is always filled by particular elements in a battle of hegemony. These particular elements establish a ‘chain of equivalence’ which fills out the abstract universal horizon such that it coheres our understanding of shared social life. As an illustration, if we were to consider the concept of freedom, Laclau would argue that there is no essential, or universal, definition of freedom. Such a definition would enter into the first notion of universality, where there is one objective understanding of freedom. By contrast, as an example of the second option, Marx argued that ideology under the capitalist mode of production produced a conception of freedom – the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market – that masked its immanent contradiction; that selling one’s labour on the market takes away one’s freedom. Nonetheless, Marx still maintained a universal concept of freedom in species being.

By contrast, Laclau comes to argue that there is no such thing as freedom in itself but, rather, freedom operates as an empty signifier such that any number of possibilities of freedom are possible, whether it is the freedom to vote, the freedom of an honourable death or Laclau’s freedom of dislocation in language. Thus freedom can become universal if it stands in for the empty place of universality. This universal, however universal in form (for Laclau, if not Žižek) can never be neutral in content – this being the major difference which separates Laclau’s conception from the Marxist notion of the universal as an illusion.

Thus, Laclau’s work on hegemony suggests that the universal occurs only through its abstraction from a chain of particular signifiers. This ‘abstract universal’ provides the hegemonic imaginary horizons – the signifiers and images the support any concept of shared social life – that people use to guides their actions, e.g. the concept of individual freedom or that of human rights. This universal imaginary stands in for the lack that constitutes the social domain. The abstract universal is normally based around an empty signifier, or an objet a, which in Lacanian terms provides a suture for that primal lack and, because of the sense of fullness that it gives, provides the subject with jouissance.

Returning to our example, liberal democratic discourses may be structured around the empty signifier ‘freedom’, which can be taken to mean any number of things. The content of these meanings is not important, unless you happen to be caught under its ideological grasp. In that case the freedom of avoiding the male gaze through a full body Burqa or being bombed into submission in the name of freedom may be of some consequence. In terms of our theoretical argumentation, however, what is important is the ideological form that allows ‘freedom’ to stand in for the presence of absence and structure the field of liberal democracy. In turn, the abstract universal extends this horizon as an ideological formation, taking on further signifiers in what Laclau terms the ‘logic of equivalence’. The condensation of particular elements around a central imaginary horizon through the logic of equivalence offers the prospect of a return to fullness and jouissance.

Such a process occurred during the 2008 US presidential elections. The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama attempted to mobilise support under the empty signifier ‘change’[15] e.g ‘Change we can believe in’, ‘Barack Obama is the leader who will bring the change our country needs’. The strength of this strategy was that change meant nothing in itself, save an opposition to the establishment Republican Party – it tapped into an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Moreover, it allowed for different political formations to identify with the signifier, whilst setting up a frontier against Republican candidate John McCain’s appeals to leadership and experience; ‘Country First’.

Žižek, however, rejects all three of these versions of universality. That said, although he holds that there is some value in Laclau’s work, particularly in the assertion that the universal is an impossible object. Despite this apparently radical conclusion, Žižek argues that Laclau is not radical enough – he leaves in place the exclusion which allows for universality in the first place. For Žižek, the question of universality is “not which particular content hegemonises the empty universal” but, rather, “which specific content has to be excluded so that the very empty form of universality emerges as the “battlefield” for hegemony?” (Žižek, 2000a: 110). As such, Žižek contends that rather than a split between the universal and the particular (causing the universal to be impossible) the universal itself is split between its empty abstraction and concrete remainder, otherwise known as the universal exception.

Žižek’s understanding of universality is exemplified in a defining chapter in his first major text, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Žižek, 1989: 11-53). Here Žižek suggests that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by

detecting a certain fissure, an asymmetry, a certain ‘pathological’ imbalance which belies the universalism of the bourgeois ‘rights and duties’. This imbalance, far from announcing the ‘imperfect realisation’ of these universal principles – that is, an insufficiency to be abolished by further development – functions as their constitutive moment: the ‘symptom’ is, strictly speaking, a particular element which subverts its own universal foundation, a species subverting its own genius (ibid.: 20).

Here, Žižek is specifically referring to Marx’s understanding of freedom, an example I referred to earlier. If liberal capitalism is based around an empty signifier of freedom, which becomes universalised through an abstract hegemonic horizon, then this notion is subverted by the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market. Although this freedom is a vital element of liberal capitalism, the very act subverts that freedom – in selling one’s labour power, the worker loses their freedom (ibid.: 21). It is this freedom to sell labour power which is the universal exception to the abstract universality of bourgeois freedom.

Here then we have an abstract universal notion of freedom. It is one which is subverted by a concrete element that is simultaneously part of the set and beyond that set. It is this element that Žižek labels the concrete universal, or universal exception. The universal exception is thus the cut of the universal whereby one of these particulars does assert itself as universal by its very exclusion from the abstract universal. The universal thus encounters itself in the form of its opposite within itself. Universality proper thus becomes a struggle between the particular elements involved in a battle for hegemony and the singular element which belies this horizon (Žižek, 1991a: 33-36).

As such, Žižek states:

With regards to the opposition between abstract and concrete universality, this means that the only way towards a truly ‘concrete’ universality leads through the full assertion of abstract negativity by means of which the universal negates its own particular content: despite misleading appearances, it is the ‘mute universality’ of the particular content which is the predominant form of abstract universality. In other words, the only way for a universality to become concrete is to stop being a neutral-medium of its particular content, and to include itself among its particular subspecies. (Žižek, 1999: 92)

The concrete universal is thus not only the exception to the false abstract universality but “persists in the very irreducible tension, non-coincidence, between these different levels” (Žižek, 2006d: 31) . One should not distinguish between the abstract and concrete universal but, rather, consider universality as the place of this split, not so much the exception itself but both the exception and the plurality of responses which occur in response to it – this is universality proper, universality as struggle (ibid.:34).

Thus, in Žižek’s reading of universality, difference does not occur between the neutral, mediating universal and its particular elements but, rather, between the universal and its own exception. This difference is experienced as an absence which in the analytic process is represented as the Real. It is by bringing this absence into the symbolic order, not in a manner in which it can be pacified by understanding but, rather, in direct contrast to the official horizon of understanding that a proper critique of universality can occur; by revealing the exceptions upon which the ‘false’ universality is founded (Žižek, 2000a: 102). Thus, the Hegelian triad of the universal, particular and singular (exception) is expanded in its Lacanian reading – a fourth element exists in the very gap between the universal and its particular, the Real (Žižek, 1991a: 43-48; 1999: 79).

Politically, the central value of this particular identification of the exception is that the concrete universal operates as a modality of the Real. If we consider the concrete universal to be the place of a constitutive exception – an element of the set which is excluded from that set – then we see that it takes a material form and yet does not have a presence within the abstract horizon: its intrusion produces a dislocation. Thus the Real can have an existence, or at least a non-existence in Lacanian parlance, outside of the discursive construction of a certain narrative; the concrete universal threatens the horizon from which it is excluded and also constitutes the point of the distortion which prevents its own appearance.

In terms of our previous example in which we identified the freedom to sell labour as the exceptional element of freedom, not only does this dislocating element exist in form – we can identify the formal structure of the wage-labour system to have an element incommensurable with its ideological narrative that cannot be acknowledged within this narrative – but the political operation of this structure produces actually existing exceptions which are excluded from an ideology. It is these points of exclusion which provide the strongest tension within ideology.

As such, if the effects of the Real are only felt as an absence then, alternatively, the Real can be an already symbolised or symbolisable element that is unable to be acknowledged within the dominant perspective. Moreover, that element can be signified within the discourse but attributed to a different cause or within a separate chain of equivalence.

In regards to the wage labour system, as we have already noted, in order for this system to operate a surplus of labour must be excluded from employment. This excluded surplus exists as an exception to the operation of capitalism and more pertinently the ideological narratives of freedom and justice around which capital functions. In this case surplus labour is not universal itself – the universalism of capital lies in the gap between its abstract and concrete instantiations – but reveals the concrete existence of a point that cannot be included, or properly acknowledged, within the abstracted horizon of understanding.

Nonetheless, we can see that surplus labour positioned as the concrete universal becomes a point of dislocation – the effect of the Real within an ideology. This effect is a bodily one which has not been accounted for thus far in this rather abstract description of Lacanian theory, based around lack, absence and exceptionality. This reading – with the exception of the previous expedition through universality – is not far divorced from Laclau’s Marxism and has given no hint as to the distinctive psychoanalytic reading of materialism discussed in the beginning of the chapter. For this reason, it is now time to turn to the other side of the dialectic of lack and excess that is at the basis of the Lacanian conception of the human condition – jouissance.

Jouissance

Jouissance is Žižek’s ultimate (Lacanian) answer to the question he poses in The Sublime Object of Ideology: “What creates and sustains the identity of a given ideological field beyond all possible variations of its positive content?” (1989:87). Žižek begins to answer this question by suggesting that Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy provides an answer to this question in the conception of the nodal point or empty signifier; that

the multitude of ‘floating signifiers’ proto-ideological elements, is structured into a unified field through the intervention of a certain ‘nodal point’ (the Lacanian point de capiton) which ‘quilts’ them, stops their sliding and fixes their meaning. (ibid; original emphasis)

As the discussion extends, however, it becomes clear that Žižek’s answer goes beyond discourse into the materiality which sustains the empty signifier. If Laclau’s schema works only at the ‘level of meaning’, than the full Lacanian analysis of ideology also requires the ‘level of enjoyment’ (ibid.: 121). Enjoyment dominates meaning and the symbolic field, bending discourse to its perverse will; the paradoxes of enjoyment are perhaps the most original, intriguing and powerful insight of the Lacanian response to the discursive turn. As such, the materiality of enjoyment also has profound consequences for the practice of Marxism. We shall soon turn to these consequences but let us first consider the level of enjoyment.

Jouissance, in all its paradoxical forms, is the central force of the human condition. It produces an excessive ‘enjoyment’ centred in the body and experienced via language, through a dialectic of excessive jouissance and the lack of the Real. Along with the anchoring effect of the exception, for Lacanian psychoanalysis jouissance is the ultimate reply to the contingency suggested by forms of postmodernity and post-structuralism. If Lacan’s analysis of the symbolic register has much in common with post-structuralism, such that Lacan has at times been mistakenly categorised in this group, then jouissance allows Lacan’s work to go beyond the confines of the symbolic order. This transgression has occurred because Lacan did not conceive of the cut of the signifier as a discursive act alone but, rather, one of symbolic castration; meaning is a bodily function. As such, Lacanian theory has little in common with the likes of Jacques Derrida; indeed the Lacan/Derrida schism is one of the most fundamental within continental philosophy.

Jouissance is a specifically Lacanian – as opposed to Freudian[16] – concept and one that carries all the inherent brilliance and difficulties that stem from Lacan’s work. Although sometimes translated into enjoyment, Jouissance is the paradoxical state of suffering/enjoyment that lies ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ (Evans, 1996: 92). Jouissance is not simply enjoyment or pleasure but, rather, it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering; jouissance is excessive because it serves no purpose, relating more to the death drive than any sense of ‘biological instinct’, evolutionary or otherwise (Levy-Stokes, 2001b: 101). As such, jouissance, like the Real, exists both beyond language and as an intimate part of language.

As with the Real, Fink (1995:60) argues there are two orders of jouissance, before (J₁) and after the letter (J₂)[17]. J₁ is the pure unmitigated jouissance that is thought to be sacrificed with the castrating entry into language – it is the subject’s unmediated connection with their body. This original enjoyment is thought to be held by the Other, as if symbolic castration is a unique experience. It is for this reason, Žižek (1997: 64-65) suggests, that we become so resentful of the explicit enjoyment of our neighbour. As such, the ultimate narrative of ideological fantasy is that castration has not occurred; language produces the impossibility of moving outside of itself and allows for the illusion that this is possible, that we can return to a time before castration. This illusion is supported by attributing lack to an obstacle ‘out-there’ that is blocking the fullness of society. The immigrant often holds this position; their very presence is that antagonistic exception which prevents the full expression of nationality. These signifiers, such as ‘Wall Street’ or ‘Jew’ become signifiers of lack and the posited reason for the failure of J₁jouissance and thus a source of jouissance in and of themselves; J₂ .

Signifiers of lack or antagonisms are just one element in the operation of J₂ ,which occurs when an object comes to substitute for the loss of J₁. The compensation which is thereby enacted occurs through fantasy in the staging of impossible acts to regain this original jouissance (J₁ being impossible because the subject cannot return to a time before language). Such a failure sustains an unconscious instinct for a time without a sense that there is something missing from being. As J₁ is a creation of language, Žižek contends that there is no jouissance for the subject before J₂, surplus-jouissance; if the surplus is removed from jouissance, it is jouissance itself which is lost (Žižek, 1989: 52). For this reason Lacan suggested that lack must always be accompanied by excess; the lack of jouissance creates an excessive response. Jouissance is not a primordial and absolute enjoyment of the body, broken by language, culture and civilisation before being bastardised into compensatory forms. Rather, jouissance occurs only because of the failure of our bodies to obtain this imagined utopia through our forced choice into language and the reign of the signifier: it is nothing but this failure, sustained by an unconscious fantasy of unmediated bodily enjoyment.

Paradoxically then, jouissance, according to US psychoanalyst, Adrian Johnston, is “enjoyable only insofar as it doesn’t get what it is ostensibly after” (2005: 239). The structure of language is such that jouissance (J₂) is only able to be enjoyed in its own failure, a failure which keeps alive the prospect of an enjoyment beyond that experienced through the structure of language; the only thing worse that the ce n’est pas ca of surplus jouissance is the prospect of meeting (surplus) jouissance in its bare naked form, and worst of all, knowing it. Such a horror turns the desire of ‘that’s not it’ into the melancholic horror of ‘that is all there is’. In this sense Oscar Wilde famous statement – there are two tragedies in life; not getting what you want and getting it – looks positively Lacanian.

Furthermore, Johnston (ibid.: 240-241) contends that the choice of jouissance mirrors the ‘Highway man’s choice’: your money or your life. Of course, this choice is no choice at all; choose ‘life’ and lose your money, choose ‘the money’ and (one can only assume!) lose your life and your money. For Johnston, the choice of the subject of language is ‘your jouissance or your life!’ If the subject choices life, which they must, then jouissance is lost; the subject is destined to spend their existence in the trauma of this loss[18]. The ‘crazy/impossible’ choice is jouissance, to go for full enjoyment, which is naturally impossible after the subject’s entry into language. Taken to the end, the subject can only lose their life in search of more extreme forms of jouissance. Perhaps more sedately, by choosing jouissance and refusing the limitations of human existence, one could suggest the subject loses their life by not experiencing the possibilities for enjoyment inherent in the human condition, the possibilities of surplus-jouissance.

Surplus-jouissance (J₂) should not be considered a secondary effect – all jouissance is secondary – but, rather, as the central focus of analysis. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities; an excessive compensation for an original lack, one which is simultaneously an imaginary illusion and very Real. It is the task of fantasy to maintain the dialectic between the two modes of jouissance, constructing the ‘lure’ that the semblance of jouissance in the symbolic order may lead to something greater.

This analysis has thus far been limited to the masculine mode of enjoyment. As noted earlier in this chapter, Lacan’s theory of sexuation produced a incompatible couplet; the masculine and the feminine. The masculine structure was entirely submitted to symbolic castration, such that any enjoyment can only be a secondary, surplus-jouissance. The feminine, however, posits a different and somewhat mysterious alternative that has led some to suggest that in the feminine lies the prospect of a radical reshaping of the political.

If all of the masculine subject is submitted to castration – with an exception – then the feminine is not-all submitted to the effect of castration. The feminine subject is also castrated but some part escapes, allowing for the possibility of an ‘Other’ jouissance beyond the phallus (Levy-Stokes, 2001a: 48). Conversely, because there is no exception to the feminine in itself – the feminine is ‘not-all’ – Lacan argued that ‘Women does not exist’. By this he meant not that there is no such thing as woman but, rather, that women cannot be universalised. What Lacan claimed did not exist was the definite article that precedes women – in the original French it is not ‘Women’ that is under erasure but, rather, the feminine definite article ‘La’ (Kay, 2003: 82). There is no set of ‘Women’, rather the feminine is structured as an infinite series from which an element can be added or subtracted without affecting the structure of the set.

In regards to jouissance, the feminine is able to expand beyond the realm of the phallus, although it is still subject to castration and the phallus. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of the feminine. Feminine enjoyment is not an alternative structure, strictly divorced from the masculine – rather it occurs as an impossible supplement to the masculine beyond the boundaries of the signifier (Levy-Stokes, 2001b: 105). Feminine jouissance, according to Carmela Levy-Stokes (2001c: 175) “goes beyond that which can be signified”, and it is the texts of mysticism that best describes this jouissance. Renata Salecl (1997), for example, uses the myth of the Sirens to describe feminine Jouissance and in Seminar XX, in which Lacan thoroughly discusses feminine jouissance, he makes regular reference to the Lewis Carroll’s fable of logic of ‘What the Tortoise said to Achilles’.

Feminine enjoyment, however, remains more of a logical possibility than a symbolic reality. As Salecl (1997:27-28) contends, Lacan speaks to it mainly to emphasise the impossibility of its conception . Indeed, it is only because language contains terms such as ‘unnameable’ that we can speak of feminine jouissance at all (Levy-Stokes, 2001c: 179). According to Fink (1997:120), the Otherness of the feminine jouissance speaks suggests that “The Other is not just an outside relative to a particular, determinate inside; it is always and inescapably Other, ‘outside’ any and all systems”.

For Žižek, however, what is important is not the beyond that the feminine signifies but, rather, that “beyond it there is nothing” (1994a: 151, original emphasis). Žižek insists that this distinction is ontological, not epistemological: what we perceive as beyond is purely a fantasmatic projection of the possibility of an eternal jouissance beyond the signifier, or, as we shall see in regards to Stavrakakis’ notion of democratic enjoyment, a radical alternative to the masculine. Žižek emphasises, however, that the feminine offers not the prospect of a beyond but in a typical Hegelian twist, “there is nothing beyond … the feminine is the structure of the limit as such, a limit that preceds what may or may not lie its beyond”(Žižek, 2005: 71). i shall return to this conception in Chapter Five in which I consider Stavrakakis attempt to mobilise the feminine in support of his ‘democratic theory of enjoyment’. For now, I will move on with our understanding of masculine jouissance through the embodiment of surplus jouissance in objet a.

Objet a and the contingent essentialism of desire

Objet a is the ultimate Lacanian answer to the stability of meaning and ideological formations. Generally untranslated, objet a refers to the A that represents the Other in Lacan’s algebra. In The Parallax View (Žižek, 2006d: 19) , Žižek argues that objet a is; “The object of psychoanalysis… the core of the psychoanalytic experience”. Likewise, Richard Boothby (2001: 242) considers objet a to be perhaps Lacan’s greatest original contribution to psychoanalysis and certainly the most significant element of his work.

Objet a has a transitional status, split between the subject and the Other/Object. Moreover, it is both the object of desire and cause of desire. Moreover, objet a is integrated, yet not completely found, within each of the three Lacanian registers; although often considered primarily as an imaginary object because of the coherence sought by the subject through the object, objet a also exists in symbolisation (Boothby, 2001: 241-244). Recently, however and primarily through Žižek’s work, objet a has been considered to be most productively thought of as an element of the Real. Here objet a operates as the little remainder of the Real within the symbolic order, the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. As such, objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, the last remainder of unity produced with the breakdown of jouissance. In this sense it is the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation (Zupančič, 2006b: 159).

Objet a thus takes the position of the missing element in being, the void at which the symbolic order remains perpetually riven. As such, via a fantasmatic relation, objet a connects the lack of the Real and the excess of jouissance by becoming both the object-cause – the gap that sets of the symbolic chain of being – and the logic of desire as objet a becomes embodied in specific objects which signal both the limit point of the symbolic order and the possibility of its suture. The paradoxical logic of objet a is such that whilst an object may appear to be the cause of desire, that object is actually a largely arbitrary – and certainly unconscious – embodiment of the hidden cause of desire (Kay, 2003: 166). Objet a becomes attached, embodied, in a particular signifier. It is this attachment which overwhelms the signifier with jouissance that makes language materialist. An object, say a commodity item like a pair of shoes, may appear to be the cause of desire; ‘I have to have those shoes, they are perfect for me because…’ The illusion, however, is that this object has taken the place of objet a which is causing the desire for the object. As such, desire has no object – only a cause, objet a (Fink, 1995: 90-91).

Objet a functions as both the object of desire and the object-cause because it is the remnant of the Real, of R₁. It is an element that remains in the subject after the subject enters the symbolic order while remaining an element of the Other, a lack that persists on account of the inability of language to connect with material reality[19]. The manner in which objet a functions is thus dependent upon the manner in which lack is constructed in fantasy. This fantasmatic construction creates the illusion of consistency in the subject. For this consistency to operate, some object must be postivised such that it can stand in for the inherent lack that would otherwise threaten consciousness (Žižek, 1997: 81).

There is, however, always a gap between the cause and object of desire, a gap which further prevents the satisfaction of desire; the object can be obtained but when it is it ceases to be the object of desire. Instead desire continues on its metonymical chain. This impossibility is the central element of the role of fantasy in desire; fantasy supports the subject’s desire, maintaining an appropriate distance from the object This object is then retroactively posited as the cause of desire. Thus we can consider objet a to be the embodiment of surplus-jouissance, the “coincidence of limit and excess, of lack and surplus… the left over which embodies the fundamental, constitutive lack” (Žižek, 1989: 53; 2001: 149). In this sense, as Fink suggests; “Desire is an end in itself: it seeks only more desire, not fixation on a specific object” (Fink, 1997:26). Such is the emptiness of desire that the subject does not really want to obtain the object of their desire, instead what is desired is desire itself, a distance which is maintained by the construction of fantasy (Fink, 1995: 90).

Desire and Ideological Fantasy

Objet a allows Lacan to understand why meaning is not entirely contingent, even if there is no transcendental ultimate referent. Jouissance adds a material weight to the signifier; meaning does not simply drift from signifier to signifier but, rather, gets fixated upon certain nodal points. These points anchor the field of meaning. This conclusion, however, is no different from the dry analysis of Laclau’s discourse theory. What lends power to Lacan’s analysis is the ability to understand why these points hold a hidden power that operates beyond linguistic structure – his answer was objet a. Through the logic of objet a certain signifiers-objects become embodied with the power of jouissance, a power which suggests the possibility of a traversal of symbolic castration and a return to the fullness of the body. This power allows certain signifiers to not only take a structural role in discourse but a determining function in the body. For this reason, radical change can only occur through a break with the ideological fantasy that structures political enjoyment. Thus, although Laclau’s approach to hegemony reveals the manner in which political struggles can occur within a pre-established horizon (although without taking into account the materiality of this battle), Žižek’s psychoanalytic reading suggests that because of the grip of jouissance and the stability provided by the exclusion of exceptional points, radical change can only occur by ‘traversing’ ideological fantasy. Although the politics of this break will be discussed in some detail in Chapter Seven, it is worth signalling here that the most effective strategy for achieving this radical change with capital come through the intrusion of the exceptional element into the (fantasmatic) discursive frame.

Fantasy helps the subject maintain a manageable distance from the cause of desire (objet a), supporting desire but not getting burnt by the empty horror revealed by the substituted object. This fantasmatic construction creates the illusion of consistency in the subject. For this consistency to operate, some object must be positivised such that it can stand in for the inherent lack that would otherwise threaten consciousness (Žižek, 1997: 81). This substitute can occur in either a positive or negative manner. In terms of the latter, there becomes a signifier of lack, one that either signifies the cause of this lack, the reason why negativity has entered the order. ‘Wall St’ has recently functioned as this signifier, although ‘Jew’ is the more powerful historical example (this exception is the masculine mode exception discussed earlier in this chapter).

On the other hand there exist positive ‘place-fillers’, or empty signifiers, which suggest the possibility of full enjoyment. Barack Obama functioned as this signifier in the 2008 US Presidential campaign, largely staying away from detailed policy issues, using signifiers like ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ which enabled a multitude of (often contradictory) signifiers to identify with his campaign. In this sense Obama became the signifier which suggested a fantasised return to the true (and great) fullness of America, a fullness and certainly greatness which is an historical fantasy[20]. It is interesting to note that in 2009, once it had become apparent that Obama’s Presidency was not going to restore America – at least in a fantasmatic sense – an equally passionate reaction was experienced on the opposite side of the political spectrum. During ‘town-hall’ debates over Health Care reform, protestors were seen – often yelling and crying hysterically – platitudes such as ‘This is not my America!’ Furthermore, impassioned attempts have been made to position Obama as an outside, both through the ‘birther’ movement (which argues, despite all evidence, that Obama was born in Kenya; these arguments often insinuate that he is also a Muslim) and by labelling Obama a socialist, communist or Nazi[21].

Desire is constituted in fantasy, which for Lacan acts as a defence against symbolic castration and the lack in the Other. Because there is no sexual relationship, no naturally occurring formation between the subject and jouissance, fantasy is unique to the subject, although it can take a myriad of forms, each producing a different relationship to castration and jouissance. In this sense fantasy offers the prospect of reuniting the subject with jouissance through the remainder of jouissance, objet a. The fantasmatic relationship mediates between objet a, the remainder of jouissance after the letter, and the idea of J₁, providing the subject with a (relatively) coherent sense of being through the possibility that these objects could fill the empty spaces in the symbolic order (Fink, 1995: 60; Žižek, 2006d: 40).

Fantasy is ultimately a narrative about the deadlock of symbolic castration. Fantasy responds to castration and antagonism, explaining the lack of jouissance, teaching the subject to desire through language. Because language is inherently intersubjective, so too is fantasy and desire. Fantasy is never singular but, rather, responds to the desires of others – the ultimate question of fantasy is Che Vuoi? , What does the Other want from me? (Žižek, 1989: 118). Indeed, the most powerful logic of fantasy is that the Other is responsible for my jouissance. That is, it is the Other who has stolen my jouissance – the jouissance owed to me exists in the Other (Žižek, 1997: 7-44). For this reason fantasy is also social – fantasy is always ideological fantasy – and politics itself is often a battle to defend fantasmatic enjoyment. Nonetheless, both terms remain important. Fantasy does not simply become ideology. Rather the implications of fantasy upon ideology has led Žižek to produce a theory of ideology which breaks strongly with the traditional Leftist-Marxist version.

Ideology, like history, is often stated to be on the wane. Nonetheless, if it appears that big power battles are over, Žižek’s notion of ideology suggests that this is the surest sign that we continue to live in an ideological world. Ideology, in this sense, comes from the illusion that there is no ideology; that society exists. British psychoanalytic theorist Jason Glynos (2001a: 196) distinguishes this ontological sense of ideology from the two approaches which dominate ideology today; Marxism and liberalism. Classical Marxism assumes that society exists; it has a positive essence which is distorted by the partial perspective of ideology. Ideology here is an illusion, dominated by power relations which Marx attributed to the essence of class relations.

The major difference between the Marxist and the Lacanian-Žižekian sense of ideology is that for Marx ideology consists of a partial representation (dominated by class-power interests) of a total reality. Alternatively, for Žižek (1989: 30-33) ideology entails a totalising attempt to represent partial social relations. As has been insisted throughout this chapter, society does not exist – it is punctuated by the Real – but the human process involves various attempts to compensate for this lack. In the social, as opposed to clinical domain, these attempts can be included under the umbrella concept of ideological fantasy. Ideology shapes cultural relationships to jouissance – as Daly states; “The central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through simultaneously producing the ‘threat’ to that closure” (1999: 220). In this sense we can link ideological fantasy to the abstract mode of universality identified earlier in the chapter.

Žižek’s distinction of the Lacanian reading of ideology from its Marxist equivalent signals the major Lacanian critique of Marxian politics: the impossibility of jouissance. In relation to our previous example of freedom and labour as the universal exception of capitalism, Žižek argues that Marx’s utopian illusion was that universality – full and equivalent exchange – could occur without a symptom (1989: 23). Žižek argues that Marx’s mistake was to “assume that the object of desire (the unconstrained expansion of productivity) would remain even when it was deprived of the cause that propels it (surplus value)” (2000d: 21). For this reason, although psychoanalysis and Žižek in particular has restored both political economy and materialism to Marxism and radical Leftist politics, rehabilitating Marxist politics has proven a tougher task. To explore the difficulties posed by psychoanalysis, we shall turn to a homology to which both Lacan and Žižek draw our attention.

What can Surplus-jouissance teach us about Surplus- value?

Lacan identified a homologous logic between the logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it – and the logic of surplus-value that was missed by Marx in his work on surplus-value and productivity. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – the private appropriation of surplus-value – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for the good of all. Marx’s notion of communism relied upon the development of productivity and surplus so that the worker could be freed from the alienation of specialisation to pursue their own sense of species being. Today, it is only the wealthiest that are able to enjoy ethical benefits of Marxian communism.

Ultimately, for Marx, the production of surplus-value was the key to capitalist productivity and the expansion of capital through circulation that ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit: it is surplus-value, based upon the historical over-supply of workers, which is the goal (object) of capital. Essentially, although the worker is fully compensated from their labour-power, the nature of labour as a commodity is that its use value produces greater value than its own; a constitutive surplus which is appropriated by the owner of the means of production (Žižek, 2006d: 57) .

Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value – an element of lack that generates more than itself – and extends it to the operation of capitalism as a totality. In this definition, capitalism is characterised by a dialectical circulation of lack and excess which corresponds to the relationship within the psyche of the Real and jouissance. Žižek’s (Marxist) point is that under capitalism there is a commodity that, through exchange, produces more than itself; the natural operation of labour is surplus. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turn money into capital; capital is embedded with a quality which makes it capable of producing a surplus which we can now label profit.

Because surplus-value acts as the core driver of capitalism, Žižek contends that the production of surplus has the same structural role in capitalism as objet a has in the psyche. Indeed, surplus-value is the objet a of capitalism. However, by labelling surplus-value as objet a, Žižek suggests that there is more to surplus-value (profit) than a simple goal. Rather, profit embodies the logic of objet a, in that it simultaneously operates as the condition of possibility and impossibility of the logic of capital. Žižek signals this when he describes surplus-value as an inner contradiction within capitalism but one that operates as the condition of possibility of the system.

However, it is not only Marx who believed that capitalism needs to rid itself of these symptoms. The whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradiction but in doing so only produces more. Capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function, generally either by producing new commodities or selling existing commodities in new markets (Jameson, 1996). Hence, the World Bank acknowledgement of the world’s poor as the ‘customers of the future’ (Moore, 2002). Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is its basis (Žižek, 1989: 52).

Thus, capitalism, like the hysterical psyche of capitalist consumer subjectivity, is never at a state of rest, there is never just value or jouissance; capitalism is a system based on movement (circulation) and the production of excess that hides an ultimate lack. Capitalism’s inherent and disavowed strength is its ability to revolutionise its own conditions, which is to create markets out of its own failings. The threat of global warming and the capitalist response of sustainable development and the ‘Green Dollar’ is perhaps the strongest contemporary example of this logic. This has led to what Alenka Zupančič (2006b: 175) describes as a “paradoxical convergence of power and resistance” where threats to the system are now simply opportunities for profit. It does not take long for 21^st century marketers to commodify the latest counter-culture movement. Indeed, some would argue that the marketers are generating this culture.

Thus, the structural homology between surplus-value in capitalism and the surplus-jouissance of the psyche can tell us much about the operation of capitalism. In both, the surplus is not an excess which is tagged onto the normal state of affairs. Rather, this surplus is the normal state, the cause which drives the excessive balance of the system. Just as in the logic of objet a (the object of surplus-jouissance) in surplus-value there is produced what appears to be a waste, an unaccounted for surplus, in the normal operation of the system (Zupančič, 2006b: 162). For Zupančič, surplus-value comes about when this waste is valorised, accounted for, not as waste but as an integral part of the system; profit (ibid.: 170). Thus, in capitalist ideology, there is never surplus; all things are accounted for as profit is simply the appropriate return for the investment of capital. Capitalist surplus excess cannot be tamed, nor integrated into a new form, such as Marx’s communism. Instead, the question is, as Žižek suggests:

The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is here: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity ‘as such’ outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the mobile of social reproduction? (Žižek, 2007a: 55)

This is a question, it seems, that Marxism is no longer equipped to handle. If Marxism has been unable to respond to the contingency of the discursive turn, it fares little better with the materialism of psychoanalysis – politically at least. What can be taken from the psychoanalytic response to the discursive turn is a deeper and more productive analysis of capitalism. If the deterministic essentialism of classical Marxism had proven unfeasible at best, the turn to language and culture removed any sense of structure, history and emancipatory drive that held Marxist discourse together. Lacanian psychoanalysis has not been able to restore the latter but through a reading of Marxism has been able revive the concepts of structure, of history and of a rehabilitated sense of determinism and causality. This rehabilitation of Marxism has allowed for a stronger critique of capitalism, in particular an exposure of its symptomatic structure, exceptionality and relations of enjoyment. It has not been able, however, to develop a form of politics that might match communism and the revolutionary subject. If the question is of our relation to surplus, then Marxism has no answer.

Psychoanalysis, however, is built on the question of the subject relation to surplus-jouissance. It is to this response that we shall now turn, considering the psychoanalytic conception of ethics as a response to jouissance both moving onto the question of politics. In doing so we shall begin to consider how the Lacanian response to surplus might inform a rehabilitation of Marxism and ultimately a response to capitalism.

[1] Perhaps more accurately, the Lacanian subject is constituted by the failure of language.

[2] Whilst being aware of the difficulty in defining and utilising Lacanian concepts in a manner divorced from his own clinical concerns, this chapter does not specifically seek to discuss the historical and dialectical movements and controversies inherent in the Lacanian oeuvre. Lacan’s work is notoriously obscure, Lacan himself using various concepts inconsistently across the length and content of his work. The basis of this chapter (the dialectics of the human condition) could not only be the subject of a thesis but is a life’s work in itself. Whilst acknowledging the difficulties of using these concepts without fully exploring the possible depths of discussion, such are the inherent limitations of a thesis project that does not take these concepts as its specific focus. There is certainly value in this discussion, and one should be very careful – as I seek to be in this thesis – not to reify any notion. Conversely, in the context of this particular thesis and its ultimate subject (the crisis of global political economy) such discussion is not especially pertinent. Thus, whilst it is vital to further argumentation to divide Lacanian thought into several central concepts, the construction of these concepts must be read with the preceding proviso in mind.

[3] Indeed Sachs (2005a) has constructed what he calls ‘clinical economics’ which can be applied across a number of different contexts based upon a number of central ‘truths’ about the operation of markets. Whilst the standard Marxist approach is to reject this doxa offhand, as we shall expand on in detail in Chapter Six, these approaches do ‘work’. That is, the exigencies of the market do have a reproducible logic which allows the interpretation of a number of laws. The vital difference between this interpretation and that of neo-liberalism is that whilst the latter conceives these laws to be a reflection of natural human behaviour our reading is that they are a reflection of the non-arbitrary operation of capitalism.

Moreover, whilst this chapter will suggest a wholly different interpretation of the human condition from that inferred by neo-liberalism and the economic subject, this is not reflected in a corresponding theory of ideal economic behaviour. Nonetheless, in Chapter Six we will discuss Yahya Madra and Ceren Özselcuk’s attempts to transpose the Lacanian theory of feminine subjectivity onto an alternative reading of class structure in an attempt to suggest an alternative conception of economic subjectivity.

[4] Utopia, as shall be the focus of discussion in Chapter Eight, can be read in two different manners. The Utopian demand could refer to the ‘perfect society’, or in Laclau’s terms, that society exists. This form of utopia would certainly be rejected by Lacan as an ethical or political position, although he would suggest that this form of utopia could be translated in jouissance. It would, however, remain equally impossible. The sense in which Bloch is referring, however, is a demand for the very impossibility of utopia; utopia as the very form of the suggestion that another mode of being is possible.

[5] Indeed this chapter, orientated by Žižek’s work, begins with the Real in its examination of Lacan’s central concepts.

[6] I thank Wendy Bolitho for her insistence upon this point.

[7] Indeed, whether it is possible or desirable to represent the Real is a matter for discussion.

[8] Perhaps the best way to understand the Real is through the very failure to produce a definition. What these attempts do is encircle a certain impossibility, a point of failure in the discourse. It is this point that can be considered the Real; the Real can never be fully represented but can be felt as the failure to account for its presence. This is perhaps what the reader should seek to take out of this section.

[9] Indeed, this signals the operation of the Real – a singular impossibility which produces a plurality of responses

[10] The reference to discourse as a system is not a reversion to a form of structuralism but, rather, a recognition that a system is still established even at the moment of its failure.

[11] Žižek (2006d) acknowledges a similar point in relation to objet a: that what for one person may be an ordinary object can for another by the absolute object of desire

[12] Fink (1995:16-19), following a model given by Lacan, gives an excellent example of this logic in the coding of a coin-toss game.

[13] Although, as Sarah Kay (2003: 87) notes the link between biological sex and sexuation is a difficult issue in Žižek’s work. It is not immediately clear why biological men tend to be subjected to the masculine position.

[14] Lacan broke with Freud in identifying the phallus not with the penis but, rather, the signifier. Again, however, there is a major ambiguity in psychoanalysis around the link between the symbolic phallus and the biological penis, the pertinent question being why the biological penis comes to represent the symbolic phallus – the link appears more than ‘radically contingent’

[15] Early in his campaign, Obama utilising ‘Hope’ as this empty universal signifier. Although Hope remained prominent throughout the campaign, it largely gave way to ‘Change’. This move was most likely inacted inorder to avoid splitting the energy of the campaign. Conversely, this example shows that such signifiers are not strictly empty but, rather, carry with them a long history of associations – what Laclau calls a chain of equivalence. The switch from the aspirations of hope to the more mainstream change is not simply a contingent move between equal signifies but signaled a change in political strategy. Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that – once in place – each ‘empty’ signifier can be articulated by any number of discourses.

[16] Nonetheless, although Freud did not use this term, the beginnings of its Lacanian composition can be noted in Freud’s work on the death drive and the dialectical relation between Eros and Thanatos.

[17] Adrian Johnston makes a similar distinction between jouissance expected and jouissance obtained (2005: 297).

[18] As we shall examine in more detail in regards to ethics in the following chapter, much of the clinical process involves coming to terms with this choice and learning to enjoy the possibilities for enjoyment which remain. The vital switch is between the subject as the tragic victim of language and the comedy of actively accepting that over which we had no control; the entry into language

[19] Although, as Žižek notes, to define objet a as the which emerges at the point of loss is to stay within the realm of desire, as opposed to drive, which we shall expand upon latter (2006c).

[20] The greatness of America being a fantasy no matter our political position. Even if a nation was once somehow empirically the ‘Greatest’ and had now fallen from grace, any attempt to return to that position remains a fantasy.

[21] On a side note to our ‘American’ theme, globally the most powerful signifier of lack for those outside of the global hegemony of the West is ‘America’, often preceded by ‘death to’.

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Zizek on the Economy

Posted on May 28, 2010 | 3 Comments

Žižek holds a symptomatic point within Leftist politics; his work grapples with the same difficulties of representation that have brought the downfall of traditional Left (essentialist) politics – namely that there is no ultimate foundation from which politics can be guaranteed – yet he maintains that the Left must not abandon the political terrain either by giving way to these dilemmas or by losing sight of the materiality of the economy. Nonetheless, whilst I have argued that Žižek is able to produce a form of political analysis based upon a Lacanian reading of the dialectic, he has (willingly) been unable to renew Marxist politics in their traditional form – one which holds to inevitability of history and communism. This is not to suggest, however, that Žižek’s (Lacanian) form of politics elides a Marxist reading. Instead, the very purpose of producing a Žižekian response to the economic problematic that defines this thesis is to suggest that Žižek’s work reconstructs Marxist politics in manner that can be relevant to the critique of contemporary capitalism. This analysis starts with Žižek’s conception of capital through which Žižek, particularly through his concern with class struggle, suggests a Lacanian re-reading of the structural primacy of the economy.

Thus far we have noted how Žižek’s Lacanian reading of Marxism suggests a damning critique of both the traditional concept of the revolutionary subject and the fantasmatic utopianism inherent in many forms of communism, both existing and theoretical. The turn to psychoanalysis, both in terms of Lacan’s clinical understanding of ethics and attempts to translate these ethics into a political system, has not produced any further optimism. Although the Lacanian orientation provides a productive understanding of politics and ideology, the institutionalisation of psychoanalysis is entirely contrary to its dialectical thrust. Moreover, the ‘radical’ Leftist movements which have emerged from a broad psychoanalytic reading – Laclau and Stavrakakis foremost – have operated by way of an exclusion of the economy via what we have identified as the ‘Democratic Hypothesis’.

In reply to this hypothesis I returned, in the previous chapter, to Žižek’s strategic reading of the political implications of Lacanian theory. Here, Žižek has developed a number of political positions in relation to the singular impossibility of the Real. To properly understand his work and the hope it provides in response to the structure of capital today, I will now consider how Žižek’s work is able to return to the economy and the politics at the heart of the Marxist demand; class struggle and communism. It is only then that we shall be able to understand the value of Žižek’s work – and psychoanalysis – as a response to the daunting dilemmas of the global economy. This response does not suggest an alternative, or Lacanian-inspired, mode of production but, rather, a form of political action which insists upon the contradictions in the current mode.

Nonetheless, against Žižek’s dismissal of psychoanalytically inspired alternative conceptions of political economy, we still have cause to consider attempts to generate such an alternative to capitalism. If Žižek’s notion of class struggle suggests a condition of impossibility at the heart of all political economy, United States political theorists Yahya Madra and Ceren Özselcuk seek to rearticulate this impossibility in a manner which positions it as the principle of a renewed form of communism. This position – whilst suggesting a number of reasoned points of critique against Žižek – faces two difficulties: the limitations of feminine politics and the contemporary structure of political economy (in particular surplus labour and the ineluctable logic of capital).

As such, this chapter begins with a discussion of Žižek’s understanding of capitalism and class struggle, one that defines his political approach. I will then consider the possibilities for political action that stem from this understanding, in particular in its resonance with the work of Özselcuk and Madra, as well as Hardt and Negri. Ultimately these perspectives, whilst shedding an illuminative light on the structure of capitalism, are unable to account for the unruly and disavowed excess that defines capitalism. Instead, Žižek comes to argue that it is only by reference to a ‘communist hypothesis’, based upon the excluded element of the global polis more than an ideological position, that can begin to return to the Marxist political tradition and properly respond to the contradictions of the global economy. The first step is to consider Žižek’s conception of capital.

Žižek and the deadlock of capitalism

Žižek argues that capitalism is not another object like any other. It is not a matter of conceiving capitalism to be a particular moment in the symbolic order. Rather, Žižek considers capitalism to have a deeper hold on the political field. Capital is not just one object in the field of hegemony but has rather hegemonised hegemony itself. As he states:

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. (Žižek, 2000b: 223)

For this reason, Žižek holds that the only possibility of invoking radical change within capitalism is the internal rupture of capital itself – there is no outside which could force a cleavage within capital.

This claim, along with the associated notion of capitalism as a modality of the Real, has been the source of much consternation from his critics. The primary accusation is that by constructing capitalism in such a manner, Žižek leaves room only for the Lacanian act as a mode of radical politics (see Devenney, 2007). Laclau, for example, states:

According to Žižek, 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 Žižek 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. (Laclau, 2000a: 291)

Laclau here makes a reasonable point in relation to the framework of capitalism but ultimately misses the subtly in Žižek’s argument. Capitalism is certainly part of the symbolic-imaginary order; I have previously discussed the manner in which the commodity form operates as a form of enjoyment. The commodity form itself is supplemented by several other (ideological) modalities of enjoyment, most notably that of democracy (as the official ideological supplement of capitalism) and culture itself, either in multi-cultural or fundamentalist/reactionary forms. Moreover, we can observe the operation of capitalism as a symbolic form, both in terms of the economic framework which is enshrined in law as the ‘invisible’ hand of the market and the emptiness of the money form. Finally, capitalism exists as a power structure, embodied in the military-industrial imperialism of the United States and its NATO allies. However, whilst Žižek touches on the structural content of global capitalism, he is more concerned with the form of capital.

In regards to this form, an initial analysis may suggest that Žižek is engaging a rhetorical device through which to make a point about the status of capital: capital has become the political-hegemonic force of our time, the point to which everything returns without becoming a specific modality of the Lacanian Real. Nonetheless, as is always the case with Žižek, there is some truth in appearance. Žižek is not simply using ‘Capital as Real’ for shock value; rather this assertion suggests a deeper point to which he returns in his later work.

Žižek does indeed argue that global capital has become the determining factor in contemporary global affairs. It has done so, however, with a twist. Capital is not dominant in the totalitarian sense of exhausting all opposition, although both violence and systematic megalomania lie – disavowed, rather than dominant – at the heart of the beast. Rather, capitalism is a modality of the symbolic Real because it is the (absent) point to which all symbolisation returns.

As noted in Chapter Three, Žižek’s definition of Capital as a symbolic form of the Real owes to his distinction (in the foreword to the 2^nd edition of For they Know Not What They Do, written in 2002) between the triadic modalities of the Real – the Real also having imaginary and symbolic dimensions. Of most interest to this argument is the symbolic Real, which Žižek describes as “the Real as consistency” – capital is thus the consistent background against which shared social life operates, even if capital is inconsistent in itself (Žižek, 2002: xii).

Žižek’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 Žižek began to speak of global capitalism and the Real in the same terms. He stated (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”(1999: 4). Here though, Žižek is using the Real in a more conventional Lacanian sense; the Real as a traumatic point within the symbolic field, rather than as the unsymbolisable logic of consistency in a symbolic field.

Žižek’s initial conceptualisation of capital as the symbolic Real arose through his three-way collaboration with Laclau and Judith Butler, Contingency, Hegemony and Universality (2000). Here Žižek considers capital as the background against which all symbolisations must relate, a “limit to resignification”’ (Žižek, 2000b: 223). Furthermore, Žižek goes on to describe capital as “structuring in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for hegemony” (Žižek, 2000e: 320). Žižek is clear, however, to make a distinction between capital as a limit to signification and hegemonic struggle, and of capital as the positive condition that creates a symbolic background against which hegemonic struggle occurs (ibid.: 319).

This last point is vital. It is not that capital prevents the production of non-capitalist discourse but, rather, that these discourses occur upon a background (which remains politically implicit, unless provoked) that determines in the last instance the parameters in which they operate. It is in this way that capitalism is a modality of the Real; as a non-explicit limit. It can appear that an outside to capital exists, as not all relations are capitalist relations. Rather capital is structured in a manner similar to one of its iconic structures, the shopping mall.

The ‘mall’ allows all apparent freedoms and is experienced as a site of consumptive enjoyment. One is free to move around and experiences no apparent repression, except in acting against the interests of the mall. What the mall has achieved is the subsumption of public space: the historical village centre, with all its associated public space and room for dissent, is now contained within the mall itself. In this sense one can be free within the mall – and within capitalism – only by following the rules and internalising the structures of the mall. These rules appear coercive only in an imaginary sense; through the insistence of jouissance and ideology.

Beneath the benevolence of the Mall and the doctrines of capitalism lies a more openly coercive sense of power, both in terms of symbolic restraint – codes of behaviour – and an undercurrent of violence. Indeed, the success of capitalism lies in its ability to combine resistance and subversion into the ideological dialectics of power: what appears to be a counter-cultural or subversive movement is always a possible opportunity for profit, whether it is the Green, Pink or Punk dollar. Moreover, if the likes of Greenpeace provide the most visible power of resistance today, then it is a form of subversion which will only serve to make capitalism more sustainable. These movements, amongst which we can include various forms of progressive action, including unions and ‘rights’ groups, act only as a ‘conscience’ – with all its super-ego connotations – upon capitalism, ultimately smoothing the wheels to prevent political unrest (Daly, 2009: 291; Hawken, 1997; Žižek, 2006e: 238). This ‘ability’ has been evident since the origins of the capitalist empire: England, for example, avoided the violence of the French revolution largely through the development of ‘poor laws’[1] (Ross, 1998: 8). The ability to integrate the demands of the polis – both progressive and populist – is the great advantage of capitalism, and not only in a critical sense. Under capitalism a great number of progressive developments have occurred. We should not, however, lose sight of the cost at which these developments have come, in particular the massive contradictions of poverty and over-development identified at the beginning of the this project.

The identification of capitalism as a form of the Real has significant consequences for political action. Firstly, it suggests that there can be no ‘outside’ of capitalism from which to establish an alternative position with any traction against capitalism. Just as in the mall analogy, an alternative or outside position can only exist so long as it is not a threat to the existence of capitalism. As an illustration, against the rhetoric of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ and the spread of democracy, critics of the US invasion of Iraq have suggested that the attack was motivated by Iraq’s vast Oil resources. Conversely, others have suggested that the Bush administration had no issue with Iraq’s use of their Oil resources, until they switched from trading their Oil in US Dollars to Euros, threatening the hegemony of the (petro)Dollar as the universal currency of the Oil market (Clark, 2005; Henderson, 2003; Looney, 2004). Indeed, immediately after the invasion, Iraqi Oil accounts were switched back to the US dollar (Petrov, 2006).

In this sense, also, the Euro – despite being an integrate element of capitalism as an exchangeable currency – operated as an antagonistic ‘outside’ to the hegemony of the US Dollar in the Oil market. Its presence threatened the hegemony of Dollar to such an extent that the intrusion of the Euro into the market produced a major dislocation, one that forced violent intervention. Thus, while the Euro cannot be conceived as an inherently anti-capitalism currency, we can see from this example the consequences of a threat to the smooth running of the logic of capital – the dominance of the US Petrodollar being part of that hegemony.

Furthermore, any radical political approach that attempts to gain traction within capitalism hits a limit at capitalism itself. This is the fundamental limitation of the democratic approach of Laclau and Stavrakakis, or the deconstructionist ethics of the likes of William Connelly (2002, 2008) and Critchley (2007b). These theorists are regular critics of Žižek, accusing him of political impotence. They suggest that Žižek’s work holds no political value because he refuses to partake in political ‘activity’ within capitalism. Connelly and Critchley, for example, each argue that we should ‘chip away’ at the capitalist structure, making whatever possible progressive political adjustments within the system. Ultimately they are social-democrats, appealing for greater tolerance and environmental standards. Stavrakakis and the earlier Laclau make similar demands in relation to democracy. What these theorists fail to understand are the limits to action posed by capitalism. Most notably, these piecemeal reforms are unable to gain any traction against the global material contradictions and deprivations which are at the heart of this thesis. What Žižek advocates, therefore, is a kind of withdrawal from the activity of politics. Here he reverses Marx’s famous Eleventh thesis, stating:

the first task today is precisely not to succumb to the temptation to act, to intervene directly in 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, 2006e: 238, original emphasis)

This withdrawal, however, is only from politics: it does not signal a withdrawal from the political. Moreover, the ontic conditions of global capitalism do not mean that radical action is impossible. Rather, an identification of the emergent void, or impossibility, within capital that opens the possibility for action is required. Capitalism is not only a repetitious monster against which we have no resistance; it may be the consistent background to political symbolisation but it is inconsistent in itself. That is, within the repetition of the chain exists a condition of impossibility that sustains as a latent possibility the entire subversion of the power of capitalism: Žižek labels this impossibility ‘class struggle’.

Žižek and the Impossibility of Class Struggle

Žižek’s approach has led critics to suggest that his work suffers from a political formalism, capable of holding no commitment other than to the Lacanian ontology. Although this accusation is largely unfounded in Žižek’s earlier work – which displayed a foundational theoretical commitment to Marxism and an increasingly apparent anti-capitalist agenda – it has become entirely redundant in Žižek’s most recent texts, in which he mobilises a ‘communist hypothesis’ and begins to speak of ‘our side’, a commitment that shall be the topic of Chapter Eight.

Nonetheless, Žižek’s most persistent commitment, however, comes via the very formalism of his ontology, producing as it does a consistent position throughout his oeuvre. Žižek argues that the antagonism which founds society today is class struggle. It is this distinction – more than the materialist character of his critique – which distinguishes Žižek’s project from that of Laclau. Laclau, first through radical democracy and then through populism, rejects the notion of an objective, or transcendental, revolutionary agent. Instead, he argues that the elevation of a particular group to the position of universality must come through the open and contingent battle for hegemony; that a particular struggle for hegemony becomes the general equivalent for other struggles, is a political, rather than economic, struggle. For Laclau:

the notion of class struggle is totally insufficient to explain the identity of the agents involved in anti-capitalist struggles. It is simply the remainder of an old-fashioned conception which saw in an assumed general proletarianisation of society the emergence of the future burier of capitalism. (2000b: 201)

He goes on to argue that:

Žižek could be criticised for introducing into his discourse a set of categories [class] which, taken literally, either have no precise meaning, or the little they have goes against what I would have thought is the main tendency of Žižek’s thought….One cannot avoid the feeling that the notion of class is brought into Žižek’s analysis as a sort of deus ex machina to play the role of the good guy against the multicultural devils… this is what Žižek ultimately does, and it is a new example of the way in which his discourse is schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed traditional Marxism. (ibid: 204-205)[2]

Without wishing to enter into any ad hominem commentary[3], one can sense the threat to Laclau’s work when he continues further into the debate, arguing that “Žižek’s thought is not organised around a truly political reflection but is, rather, a psychoanalytic discourse which draws its examples from the politco-ideological field” (2000a: 289, original emphasis); and “the only thing one get from him [Žižek] is injunctions to overthrow capitalism or to abolish liberal democracy, which have no meaning at all … his way of dealing with Marxist categories…would put the agenda of the Left back fifty years” (ibid.: 290). Ultimately, for Laclau, class is simply one of the possible antagonisms in a radical democratic or populism movement, and one that “has lost all intuitive content” (ibid.: 298) such that “[t]here are still remainders of full class identities in our world – a mining enclave, some backward peasant areas – but the main line of development works in the opposite direction” (ibid.: 301).

As Madra and Özselcuk (2005: 81) suggest, here Laclau is strangely resistant to the consequences of his own work – he rejects class as an essentialist notion, without any possibility of reconstruction. Laclau does not, for example, reject the notion of sexuality because it is essentialist but, rather, encourages an emphasis on the contingency in every construction of sexuality. Thus, whilst Laclau’s project began with a reworking of Marxism, it now appears powerfully opposed to any such rehabilitation of Marxist categories. In his view, Žižek is a theoretically lost soul, attempting to find meaning in a proliferation of particularised identities by hanging on to one last sense of Marxist essentialism.

Žižek, however, relies far more on Lacan than Marx for his understanding of the form that class struggle takes, even if the narrative remains Marxist. Here, class struggle does not refer to any empirically existing class structures – the disappearance of the Western working class, for example – but, rather, an absent antagonism around which social life is constructed. Žižek’s identification of class struggle as this transcendental antagonism began as an almost sheepish aside in a discussion of the Real in The Sublime Object of Ideology. He stated:

In this way we might reread even the classic notion of ‘class struggle’: it is not the last signifier giving meaning to all social phenomena (‘all social processes are in the final analysis expressions of the class struggle’) but – quite the contrary – a certain limit, a pure negativity, a traumatic limit which prevents the final totalisation of the social-ideological field. (1989: 164)

In his next major text, For They Know Not What They Do (1991), Žižek was more bullish about the status of class struggle. He argued that while class struggle is the totalising moment in society its holds no final guarantee. Instead class struggle – because it signals the failure of society to constitute itself – is the antagonism which holds together society. Class struggle acts as this point not as a transcendental signifier but, rather, in its absence within the social imaginary. In this sense class struggle is a modality of the Real; it is both the antagonistic point to which direct access is not available and the factor preventing this access. Therefore class struggle is not only the failure of each symbolisation but also operates so as to “conceal and patch up the rift of class struggle” (1991: 100).

Here class struggle – as with the Real – is not simply a historical occurrence but is rather the non-historical kernel to which history responds. This notion of class struggle does not suggest any particular form of ideological formation (including that of the communist state) but, rather, holds that all class formations are ultimately a response to the failure of the class relationship. Indeed, all political formations are a response to this absence – that of the Real (ibid.: 100-101).

The logic of sexuation (between the masculine and the feminine) is the model for Žižek’s understanding of class struggle. Just as for Lacan there is no sexual relationship, Žižek suggests that there is no class relationship. The condition of sexual difference is not the ultimate referent of sexual relations but, rather, that point which prevents the understanding of sexual difference itself (Žižek, 1997: 216). In this same vein, as a consequence of the exclusion of class from the symbolic realm, Žižek argues that class struggle cannot become the “positive object of research” (2006b: 82). The problem for Žižek is that there is no meta-language in which to discuss class; any definition of class struggle cannot but be positioned within class struggle. Even the designation of class struggle as this point is not neutral; class struggle itself is included in class struggle. Thus, Žižek contends that class struggle doesn’t exist because it has the character of being non-all; there is no exception that escapes its terms (1994b: 22). In this sense Žižek suggests that class struggle has the structure of the feminine, in the Lacanian sense of the word. Under the Lacanian logic of the masculine, all subjects are submitted to the law through the existence of an exception which completes the set of all possible social relations. The feminine, in comparison, is without exception. The feminine is non-all; there is nothing of the condition of the feminine that is not included in the set. This formulae means that there is no possible neutral point – no meta-language – to give coherence to any social formation, or which would allow society to exist. Instead, society is marked by an internal limit which we can only ascertain through the effects within social relations of the absence of its presence (ibid.: 125).

This point attracts strong criticism (Devenney, 2007). Devenney contends that Žižek’s account of capitalism is inadequate, in particular his apparent refusal to define the manner in which he is using the concept of class. Suggesting that Žižek’s argument is ‘extraordinary’, with the only purpose that it “allows Žižek to wear Marxist labels” (ibid.: 54), Devenney roundly dismisses Žižek’s argument that an element – specifically class – can come to structure the social through its absence. For Devenney, this is a statement entirely without ‘evidence’ (ibid.: 54).

In reply, Žižek is equally critical of Devenney, in particular his ‘faked ignorance’ at the possible structuring role of an element which, while being present symbolically – we can write the word ‘class’ – is absent at the level of the imaginary (insofar as we cannot imagine the presence of something that is absent) (Žižek, 2007b: 212). For Žižek and other readers of Lacan, the effect of absence (in the form of the Real) does not equate to an absence of effect; a phenomenon can form an absence within ideology, yet it is this absence which propels ideology itself. Such is the nature of the Lacanian Real; although it ‘does not exist’ within the positive contours of reality it produces a range of effects.

Nonetheless, a potent question remains – one that Laclau would certainly be asking at this point: Why is it that the economy and in particular class struggle hold this privileged position? Has class struggle taken this form because of contingent historical circumstances relating to the meta-hegemony of capitalism, or is class an ahistorical antagonism? Moreover, what is the relationship between class struggle as Žižek has identified it, and what might be deemed ‘actually existing class struggle’ in relation to capitalism?

Žižek compares class struggle, which can be read as the economy, with Freud’s sexual ‘essentialism’. Žižek takes Freud to argue that sexuality holds this status because there is no sexual relationship – as a result of symbolic castration, the subject is constitutively unable to both achieve the sexual ‘Thing’ and to acknowledge this impossibility. Instead, this search for the fullness of the sexual relationship spills over to other discourses – the arts, for example – contaminating their content (2008a: 294). Moreover, Žižek argues that:

the Marxist hypothesis is that, Mutatis Mutandis, the same goes for the “economy”, for the collective process of production: the social organisation of production (“the mode of production”) is not just one among many levels of social organization, it is the site of “contradiction” of structural instability, of the central social antagonism (“there is no class relationship”), which, as such, spills over into all other levels. (ibid.: 294).

This move has a double significance. Žižek speaks for the first time about the content of class struggle – the contradictions of the mode of production – making it clear that his conception of class struggle is not simply a substitute for the Lacanian Real but, rather, has a reference to the history of Marxism. Secondly, Žižek identifies the economy – in the form of class struggle – as the base of social totality. This is not a simple reproduction of Marx’s historical materialism; indeed, as has been discussed thus far in this chapter, Žižek’s conception of class struggle has been developed through Lacan to subvert this form of determinism.

Furthermore, Žižek rejects any suggestion of economic determinism, arguing that the effect of the absent presence of class struggle suggests an extimate relationship between politics and economy rather than a strict division. Žižek here attempts to move between the two readings of Marxism presented in this thesis; the economic determinism of traditional Marxism and the (discursive) political essentialism that has dominated post-Marxism after the discursive turn. For Žižek, because class struggle ensures that the economy is non-all, class is the politics at the heart of the economy – the impossibility of the class relationship means that there is no naturally occurring sense of economy, hence every form of economy is a political economy. To rephrase, because class struggle means the economy is never complete, it is class struggle which ensures that the economy will always be political; contra Marx, there is no historically inevitable form of the economy. Instead, class struggle means that any formation of the economy will always have to be a political formation.

At this stage, however, it is unclear how this definition is continuous with Žižek’s previous conception of capitalism as a modality of the Real. If the economy qua class struggle has the ahistorical determining role discussed above, the empirical and historical observation that capitalism has become a Real limit to shared social life appears redundant. Capitalism, as the contemporary mode of economy, has no particular transcendental status: the economy itself has this status. Nonetheless, whilst Žižek himself has not sought to make a strong distinction between the economy and capital in relation to the Real – indeed he appears to have largely abandoned the capital-as-Real thesis – we can locate a divergence between the economy as an abstract form and global capitalism as an empirical system.

By empirical, here I am referring to a phenomenon which has a symbolic-imaginary appearance rather than a Real effect. Global capitalism as an empirically existing system can be symbolically identified as it arguably has an imaginary formulation. Alternatively, class struggle as an ahistorical antagonism perforates each modality of economy. Both Žižek and Badiou have come to argue that capitalism is not a form of civilisation, that it is without ideology (Žižek, 2009a: 25). Whilst this would reinforce Žižek’s point in regards to capital as a symbolic chain, we can perhaps now risk a triadic conception of capitalism – as a symbolic chain, as being punctured by class struggle as an effect of the Real, and as being sutured through an imaginary cultural formation. Moreover, whilst class struggle can be identified as the impossibility in every ahistorical (abstract) form of the economy, class struggle itself takes a specific form in every instantiation of the economy, capitalism being no exception.

Žižek’s point in regards to the economy is that whilst capitalism has both an imaginary and symbolic appearance, punctuated by class struggle, its dominance has become such that the symbolic logic of capitalism has become a form of the Real. The capitalist form of economy has become such a strong historical form, in terms of militancy and its materialism, its incitement of cultural jouissance and, most importantly, its own revolutionary feedback system, that every threat to the system becomes an opportunity for profit. Moreover, never before has an economic system had a grip on the global polis such that its ‘truth’ becomes self-reinforcing; if one were to attempt to introduce a ‘socialisation’ of the means of production, the degree of ‘capital flight’ would be such that both the efficiency of capitalism and its status as the ‘only game in town’ would be reinforced. This is a historical assertion, divorced from the ahistorical Real of class struggle.

What, however, is the relationship between actually existing class formations within capitalism, and the structure of class struggle itself? Despite suggesting that class struggle never directly appears, Žižek does make regular references to class formations. Sharpe (2004: 202-205) argues that this is a hesitation within Žižek’s work, contending that his identification of class formations contradicts his reference to class struggle qua Real. Here, Sharpe suggests that Žižek becomes entwined in the same impossible game that Laclau rejected: the identification and necessary enlargement of conceptions of the working class. If Žižek is to speak of class as an empirically locatable phenomenon, then a more detailed analysis of class structure is required. Sharpe comes to argue that today such a description has become impossible and it is for this reason that Žižek can only refer to class without expanding upon it.

Indeed, Žižek does make fairly regular references to changes in class structures which, in Sharpe’s terms, can appear ‘ad hoc’ or ‘journalistic’. Sharpe (ibid: 197), for instance, cites Žižek’s distinction between the ‘symbolic’ class of Western professionals, the middle class of Western manual labour and the excluded class, which he links to the symbolic, imaginary and Real (Žižek, 2000e: 323). There is a certain logic to Sharpe’s critique; such an analysis does not engage with the difficult history of class structure, nor does it appear to have a strong empirical backing. Conversely, the mapping of class structure is not Žižek’s central point in this passage; rather it is the subsequent reference – a reference Sharpe ignores – to the manner in which class antagonism is the underlying factor beneath all these political forms of identity.

Somewhat sloppy scholarship aside, the difficult question of the relationship between class struggle and class structure remains. Žižek appears to be arguing two points: that class struggle is the antagonism which determines social life in its absence: and that class as a specific antagonism is excluded from political life within capitalism. Yet these positions are not strictly correlative. Just because class struggle is never directly expressed does not mean that class struggle never occurs. Class struggle has a symbolic form but not an imaginary one – whilst we can speak the word, we cannot imagine a coherent class relationship. That is, whilst the feminine form of class struggle makes a definition of the raw form of class struggle strictly impossible – we cannot speak of the content of class struggle in itself – because class struggle actually occurs in class formations, we can encircle this possibility and produce a reading which relies upon both Lacanian and Marxism notions.

The difficulty is that Žižek does not come to define what he means by class structure – can it be taken from Marx’s critique of the contradictions of the mode of production, as Žižek’s previous comments imply? That is, if class has a symbolic form, rather than a singular signifier, can we specify what that form is, even if an ideal content cannot be identified?

We can move towards answering this question through one of Žižek’s most common suggestions, that class is the excluded antagonism from the list of ‘new social movements’ that dominates the ‘New Left’. Žižek argues that class is not just one on the list but, rather, is the antagonism today – but not in terms of the set of empirically-existing struggles. For Žižek it is the exclusion of class struggle qua the Real from the symbolic chain that allows for the coherent construction of capital. In this sense, Žižek argues that it is this exclusion of class which constitutes the global capitalist horizon. In relation to the battle for universality and hegemony in global capitalism via the exclusion of class, he contends:

This contamination of the universal by the particular is ‘stronger’ than the struggle for hegemony (i.e. for which particular content will hegemonise the universality in question): it structures in advance the very terrain on which the multitude of particular contents fight for hegemony… the question is, also and above all, which secret privileging and inclusions/exclusions had to occur for this empty place as such to emerge in the first place. (Žižek, 2000e: 320, original emphasis)

Thus, we can identify (imaginary) forms of class struggle – say changes in the relationship between the managerial function of ‘knowledge’ workers – but these imaginary forms are themselves only a response to the impossibility of the class relationship. Just as the lack of a sexual relationship does not prevent sex from occurring – in fact it is the reason it occurs – class relationships occur as a response to the impossibility of class struggle. Moreover, just as there is no imaginary ideal form of sex, contra historical Marxism, there is no ideal form of class relationship.

This is a point taken up by Madra and Özselcuk – working as part of a group based around the Rethinking Marxism journal – who, like Stavrakakis in regards to democracy, argue that a (partial) ideal form of class relationship can be found in the institutionalisation of the impossibility of class struggle. It is to this vital point of discussion, one quite opposed to Žižek’s work, which I shall now turn. If much of this response has been rehearsed in the previous chapter by way of a reply to Stavrakakis, Madra and Özselcuk raise a more interesting point in regards to the structure of class relations, both in terms of the ahistorical conditions of possibility for class formations and of their structuration within capitalist political economy.

There appears to be a gap within Žižek’s work thus far unaccounted for: I have identified the formal (Lacanian) structure of class relations and suggested that this does not rule out attempts to formulate class relationships in ideology. Žižek, however, has only implied the Marxist structure of class struggle; here Madra and Özselcuk seek to be more explicit.

Rethinking Class as Surplus-Labour

This strand of work has emerged from a collection of scholars working largely out of the University of Massachusetts. This group has formed the Association for Economic and Social Analysis (AESA) and Community Economies Collective (CEC), publishing primarily out of the Rethinking Marxism journal. Explicitly following both Laclau and Žižek, the grouping hopes that by rethinking Marx’s notion of class struggle through Lacanian psychoanalysis, possibilities will emerge for “not only repeating Marx’s critique of the political economy of capitalism but also of reformulating communism as an axiom without resorting to a utopian social ideal as its fantasmatic support” (Özselcuk & Madra, 2005: 80).

The group itself has attempted, inline with Althusser’s work on overdetermination, to reconsider class as a process – understood as the “processes of producing, appropriating and distributing surplus labour” (Graham & Amariglio, 2006: 200). This contrasts with a consideration of class as a fixed or determinate position. Thus, rather than occupying part of the working class, one might be embedded in class processes as both a producer involved in direct labour and the consumer of symbolic capital. Class is thus a process with three distinct moments; the production, appropriation and distribution of surplus. These moments are enacted within an infinite number of discourses, making the process of class somewhat similar to Žižek’s notion of class struggle; class is a process that is expressed through other discourses. Indeed, like Žižek, Madra and Özselcuk (2007: 92) argue that class struggle is “[the] foundational, constitutive lack as the absent cause, the foundational antagonism, the constitutive impossibility, around which sociality is constructed”.

Whilst the AESA have opened up class and took a step away from economic determinism, their position has remained open to two separate threats. Politically, the AESA delineation has tended to remain within a transcendental ontology of class and ethics, relying on notions of theft and exclusion which assumed that producers were the natural owners of surplus (Madra, 2006: 206). Additionally, and economically, by defining class as a process, the AESA have rejected any structural necessity to class and instead focused on the contingency of class identity and process. Like Laclau’s work, this conception of class has appeared to leave itself open to the possibility that the dissolution of (Western) class identities would mean the disappearance of class struggle itself.

Two particular theorists in the AESA group, Madra and Özselcuk have sought to mediate this difficulty by taking on a more Lacanian reading of class. Citing Žižek (Özselcuk & Madra, 2005: 85), they suggest that Lacan’s maxim ‘there is no sexual relationship’ can be transposed to class struggle, such that ‘there is no class relationship’: there is no possibility of successfully integrating the hitch of class struggle into any organisation of political economy. Although sharing the same ontological commitment, Madra and Özselcuk diverge strongly from Žižek in their epistemological interpretation of this commitment, a distinction with real political consequences.

Whilst Žižek has (implicitly at least) rejected a definition of the structure of class antagonism, Madra and Özselcuk base their work around a deconstruction of the structure of class struggle. They posit that concrete class structures do exist but any attempts to consummate the class relationship will necessary fail. Madra and Özselcuk argue that Žižek’s refusal to delineate the cause of class relations, rather than its effects, results in an inability to see past specifically capitalist class relations. As part of this, Madra and Özselcuk critique Žižek’s use of surplus-value – as opposed to surplus-labour – in conceiving of the homologous relationship between Lacanian surplus-jouissance and Marxism. They contend that by referring specifically to the capitalist form of surplus-labour in surplus-value, Žižek is unable to see envisage the possibility of class relations outside of capitalism. To reiterate this important point, Madra and Özselcuk argue that because Žižek abstracts his conception of class struggle only from capitalism, he is unable to conceive of the possibility of alternative forms of production and as such is destined to remain within the horizon of capital.

Furthermore, Madra and Özselcuk argue that Žižek allows for contingency within capitalism only at the moment of consumption. In terms of production, however, Žižek considers only a structural approach, the cyclical ‘accumulation of capital’(Özselcuk & Madra, 2007: 85). This approach gives capital a teleological presence, as if it could continue reproducing itself infinitely.

This is not a point with which Žižek would disagree; the basis of his argument in regards to capitalism qua the symbolic Real is that the reproduction of capitalism no longer requires an active subjective presence. It is, however, a point on which Madra and Özselcuk take issue. Capital does not simply exist, rather it is actively reproduced by subject positions (ibid.: 84). They argue that because Žižek does not subjectivise the sphere of production, or consider the conditions of possibility for production outside of capitalism, he misses a possible realm for political action. This critique is familiar reproach to Žižek’s work – that his ontological commitments, in particular his construction of capitalism as a self-revolutionising beast run amuck – leaves too little room for political action (ibid.: 83).

By contrast, Madra and Özselcuk argue that class formations “are fantasmatic and libidinally animated formations, structured around an impossibility that stains all attempts to institute a stable and harmonious organisation of production, appropriation and distribution of surplus labour” (Özselcuk & Madra, 2007; 78). If class struggle is impossible, then this impossibility occurs within ideological formations which attempt to seal the wound of their foundation. In response, Madra and Özselcuk seek to develop a “psychoanalytically informed economic difference that pertains to class” (ibid.: 79, original emphasis) arguing that Žižek has been unable to “imagine the ethico-political principles of a non-capitalist and non-exploitative relation to class” because he is “neither clear as to what the object of class struggle is, nor indicative of what a new way of organising our enjoyment to the economy might be” (ibid.: 79).

Madra and Özselcuk contend that by examining the conditions of possibility for the necessary failure of the class relation we will be in a position to both understand how class operates in capitalism and how it might operate in a non-utopian conception of an axiomatic communism. In doing so, they implicitly assume both that such a transition is possible at this stage in history and that class struggle itself can be understood. Žižek, no doubt, would suggest that any position taken on class struggle can only be ideological – one cannot get outside of class struggle to speak about class struggle. Nonetheless, this appears to be a risk that Madra and Özselcuk are willing to take.

Madra and Özselcuk’s conception of surplus labour – as opposed to the surplus of labour to which we have previously reference throughout this thesis – is vital to both their epistemological understanding of class and its ontological status. Özselcuk and Madra argue that production is always collective and cannot be reduced to the reproduction of singular workers. As a result labour is always the aggregation of socially organised individual parts and one cannot distinguish between labour which is necessary and that which is surplus. As a corollary, they contend that all labour is surplus labour; the natural operation of labour is the production of surplus (Özselcuk & Madra, 2007: 91).

Madra and Özselcuk explicitly seek to distinguish the universal form of surplus labour from its capitalist instantiation claiming that Žižek’s failure to do so significantly reduces the possibility of conceiving of class structures outside of capital. For the former, class structures are always a response to the production, distribution and appropriation of surplus labour. Although there is no naturally occurring form of class relationship – class relationships always fail – this does not prevent their occurrence as fantasmatic forms of jouissance. That is, all forms of sociality are ultimately a response to the lack imbued by the impossibility of class struggle. As such, these structures are not simply absent, as Žižek suggests but, rather, occur as forms of ideological fantasy, attempting to compensate for the lack upon which any instantiation of class struggle is founded. As a corollary, Madra and Özselcuk suggest that the basic (ahistorical) form of class struggle can be identified – contra Žižek, not only can the operation of class struggle within global capitalism be represented but the prospects for class struggle beyond capital can be envisaged.

Žižek suggests that class struggle occurs in the imaginary only to the extent that the presence of absence can be staged in the symbolic order. By contrast, Madra and Özselcuk argue that by identifying both the symbolic formula of the impossible class relationship – based around surplus-labour – as well as the manner in which they are subjectively embodied as forms of fantasy, a new, non-exclusive class formation is possible. As such, they reject the apparent consequences of the Lacanian homology between surplus-jouissance and surplus-value (focused on in the conclusion to Chapter Three) contending that it applies only to capitalism; replacing surplus-value with surplus labour introduces a new range of possibilities. Here they follow the same line of thought as Stavrakakis, suggesting what is required is a different relationship to lack, specifically one informed by a feminine, as opposed to masculine, logic.

According to Madra and Özselcuk, within capitalism it is a masculine logic which structures the field. Under this logic, the antagonism of class is partially sutured by relations of ideological fantasy and jouissance which operate through the production of an exception. They locate this exception to the capitalist, masculine, form of political economy in the Board of Directors (2007: 94). In contrast to other stakeholders throughout the organisation who battle for surplus, the directors enjoy other people’s surplus without giving anything in return. As noted in Chapter Three, the authors are here using only one possible sense of the exception. We may take issue with both the example given – would not the silent shareholder be a better embodiment of this position? – as well as the status of the exception. A more pertinent example of the exclusion is the constitutive surplus of labour within capitalism, both in terms of the officially unemployment and those unfortunate souls noted in the introduction to this thesis, for who employment is a strange exception rather than the norm.

It is this identification of the masculine as the defining exception to capitalism that causes the biggest difficulty in Madra and Özselcuk’s conception of an ethico-political movement to feminine class struggle. They consider that psychoanalysis has a very ‘precise’ sense of difference; sexual difference between the masculine and the feminine (2007: 98). Madra and Özselcuk argue that this difference specifies a move from the capitalist (masculine) ‘all’ to a communist, feminine ‘non-all’. For the authors, the feminine offers an entirely plausible and possible alternative ontological horizon, as if the masculine had simply held a historical hegemony that could be overturned with through a stunning grasp of the communist (partial) truth.

According to Madra and Özselcuk – and here their work is confluent with Žižek’s – the masculine logic of class relations within capitalism allows for an unlimited sense of difference but this play of difference depends upon the existence of a constitutive exception. By contrast, the feminine allows for unlimited difference without an exception because it is non-exclusive; there is nothing that is not included within the set. For this reason, “exclusive rights over the dispatching of the surplus” (2005: 93) and a “dictatorship of the proletariat” would simply reproduce the fantasy of the wholeness of being and reproduce the masculine logic of exception.

Like Stavrakakis’ conception of feminine jouissance and radical democracy, feminine class struggle appears both logical and desirable. If the masculine produces an exception and the feminine does not, then surely this is a preferable way for the economy to operate. An axiomatic commitment, the idea that “no one can have exclusive rights to the appropriation of surplus” (2007: 100) is entirely congruent with the history of Marxism. Indeed, this axiomatic commitment – one derived from the work of Alan Badiou – informs the communist hypothesis that we shall build upon in the final chapter. This key difference, as we shall see, is with the way in which this commitment is held.

If this solution appears too simple – given the complexity of the global economy and the sustainability problematic to which this thesis is directed – then it sadly is. The concern here is not so much abstract theoretical idealism around the utopian society but, rather, of a plausible response to the contradictions of the global economy. There are two central concerns with the notion of a feminine class struggle. The first objection is philosophical, the other pertaining to political analysis of the global economy.

Firstly, Lacan did not conceive of the feminine as an alternative panacea to the ills of the subject or society. Instead, for Lacan the feminine was a strictly impossible position, held only by comparison to the masculine. The masculine and the feminine are two alternative logical positions in regards symbolic castration but only the masculine is historically possible. Class struggle may be have a feminine form but, as noted, in the previous chapter in relation to Stavrakakis and radical democracy, feminine jouissance is not a feasible position upon which to structure politics – the content of class struggle cannot be feminine.

Yet, if feminine jouissance is impossible, is it nonetheless possible to suggest a form of class struggle without exception? At the core of Madra and Özselcuk’s argument is an axiomatic commitment – one they see as key to a communist politics – to the non-exclusive rights to surplus. If I have thus far rejected their proposed approach for achieving this structure – class formations structured around feminine jouissance – is it possible to specify a form of economy that does not rely on any particular group receiving exclusive rights to surplus?

Including the Multitude?

This logic is found at work in Hardt and Negri’s conception of the multitude; the operation of postmodern forms of ‘immaterial’ labour whereby the means of production are directly embedded in the workers themselves (Hardt & Negri, 2000, 2004). Hardt and Negri suggest that the postmodern form of capitalist sovereignty – sovereignty that occurs without an exceptional agency but, rather, through direct communication between workers – leads to the possibility of ‘absolute democracy’ and a decisive break with capital.

Both Hardt and Negri and Madra and Özselcuk identify the board of directors or ‘management’ as the exception which is constitutive of power within capitalism. Together they argue that the abolition of this managing figurehead, who receives surplus only from this (unnecessary) organising function, is the necessary step towards a new era in history. Conversely, by focusing on the materialism of the economy and Žižek’s – as opposed to Laclau’s – understanding of universality and exception, such that it is excess labour, rather than the board of directors which maintains the structure of capital – then we might more productively interpret the lumpenproletariat as the point of exclusion. Through this conception, the inability of any postmodern mode of political economy to respond to the exclusion of excess labour from the global polis can be seen.

Hardt and Negri, identify the global (political) economy as ‘empire’, within which lies the latent potential of the workers of the multitude. Empire’s predominate feature is the reliance upon communication and cooperation between subjects. That is, one is no longer able to make a strict distinction between politics, the economy and social life; the reproduction of shared social life through communication and cooperation, always political in itself, is now the primary source of profit for Western capital. We have entered an era of biopolitical production, such that; “the production of social life itself, in which the economic, the political, and the cultural increasingly overlap and invest one another” (Hardt & Negri, 2000: xiii).

The changing nature of capitalist sovereignty is reflected in the movement from a disciplinary society to a society of control, where power is directly bio-power, internalised into the body as the whole of social life comes to be administered in the ‘panoptican affect’ (Hardt & Negri, 2000: 23-24). Instead of a single entity controlling power – a modernist organisation of power – sovereignty is rather constructed via the processes of the cultural reproduction of capitalism. Whilst we can acknowledge an influential structure of governing organisations, including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods financial instruments, regional trade organisations and agreements and the easily forgotten nation-state itself (as well as more local forms of sovereignty within the state), the dominant form of sovereignty within Empire is what Hardt and Negri label ‘ether’– the reproduction of shared social life (in the name of profit) by immaterial labour through cooperation and communication (2000: 346).

In contrast to modernist imperialism, for Hardt and Negri empire is without exception: all forms of social life potentially falls within its grasp. Neither has it a home, despite the apparent hegemony of the United States, instead it is organised around the ‘non-place’ of capital. This non-place is mediated by the continuous flow of ether; sovereignty is guaranteed only to the extent that it is reproduced in our social relations as nothing exists outside of the existence of capitalist social relations that might secure the system. Instead capitalism is actively – if unknowingly – reproduced by those who participate. Here, Hardt and Negri return to a traditional Marxist conception of ideology; ideology prevents the subject from acknowledging the truth about their place in the mode of production.

For this reason we can argue that Hardt and Negri’s conception of empire – and, as we shall see, its reactionary potential, the multitude – matches the same (feminine) structure as suggested by Madra and Özselcuk. The feminine, outside of the clinic, here appears to be nothing more than a postmodern cultural practice. As part of this practice, theorists of postmodernity have come to suggest that the decline of stable identities and power relations which result from the loss of sovereign authority has offered the prospect of widespread freedom from the symbolic order, even if material emancipation is no longer an appropriate political goal.

Capitalism, or rather empire, has achieved this level of hermeneutic self-containment through the deployment of communication and cooperation as the hegemonic forms of labour in capitalism – immaterial labour. Emblematic here are social networking sites. These sites – most notably Facebook, MySpace and Youtube – commodify human relationships by offering a free and attractive service to users who update their personal details in order to interact with their peers. This information is then stored and sold to advertisers, both for research purposes and for the benefit of more direct advertising. The business model of these sites is similar to that of newspaper[4] – the selling of readers’ attention to advertisers – with a greater reliance upon user interaction. Here, social relationships and communities are actively created and reproduced for the sole purpose of the production of profit.

The industry which embodies both immaterial labour and the femininity of the postmodern economy is finance capitalism. Finance capitalism is the ultimate example of immaterial labour, whereby production itself does not exist; vast sums of money change hands through an intangible global system of co-operation and communication. Yet, that money exists not only because we believe it to exist (money being a system of trust whereby I believe that the currency which you offer me is ‘legitimate’) but because our societal practices establish this belief for us. We have no choice but to use money and in functioning economies only the most neurotic of users would concern themselves with the acceptance of their money.

Moreover, finance capital comes to stand between Madra and Özselcuk’s critique of Žižek’s understanding of capital as the symbolic Real, and Hardt and Negri’s reading of immaterial labour. Žižek argues that the machinery of capitalism is engineered only for its own continued expansion. Money becomes an end in itself rather than being tied to some notion of ‘actual material progress’ (Žižek, 2006d: 61-62) . Žižek’s main target here is financial capital and its continual expansion of the circulation of money, in which there is no actual goal other than the more money. Currency trading and arbitrage, in which money is bought in one market and quickly sold again in another to take advantage of a temporary misalignment in prices (Moles & Terry, 1997: 19) are examples of this kind of symbolic money-for-money transactions within capitalism. Moreover, Žižek comes to argue that this process exemplifies the movement of drive where the goal is circulation and movement around the goal (money for the sake of money) as opposed to surplus-value in desire, which is linked to imaginary desires for notions such as progress, under the guise of commodity fetishism. This movement is characterised by the change from C-M-C (the commodity is exchanged for money in order to obtain other commodities) to M-C-M (money is used to obtain commodities for trade in order to make more money). The latter is certainly the logic of capital but it operates under the illusion of the former, which carries the ideological illusion of a progression towards the object.

By contrast, as I noted earlier, Madra and Özselcuk argued that this contention takes away subjectivity from the mode of production and depersonalises the potential for political action. Moreover, we see in the notion of Empire that finance capital is based upon subjective communication and cooperation. Thus, Žižek may be correct in his description of the pure structure of capitalism adhering the dynamics of drive, yet although at an abstract level of analysis we can detect the structure of drive, there remains a subjective level of production. Indeed, by contrast to the systematic production of drive, those actively involved in production are more likely to adhere to an economy of desire. Thus, while those embedded in the process, say currency traders, may be aware on some level that money is ultimately empty they still operate in a discourse of desire; whether to fulfil their personal budget, to get further status or to get a pay raise, at this level capitalism remains driven by desire, even if the resulting structure is of drive. As a corollary, Žižek’s point is that whilst global capitalism is necessarily subjectivised in the bodies of its participants, the systematic operation of capital is such that no radical political action is possible at that level. Instead, the consequence of his identification of capital as a modality of the Real is that effective political action can only occur by taking this systematic structure into account.

These ideas find their expression, also, in the the notion that the development of financial capital has been congruent with the rise of postmodernity, or as Jameson calls it, late modernity[5] (Jameson, 2000). Financial capital, although always operative in some form throughout the modern era, established its dominance in the 1970s. The 1970s saw the advent of two vital and interlinked trends, over-production and the decoupling of the dollar from the gold standard. The crisis of over-production, combined with the oil shocks early in the decade, led a mass of surplus looking for an investment home. Some of this surplus was redirected into newly established 3rd world markets but the core of the problem remained. The solution was the development of the financial industry, whereby ‘excess’ currency was able to be put into circulation and expanded without any physical reference (Jameson, 1996; Wade, 2007, 2008).

Key to this move was Richard Nixon’s breaking of the US Dollar from the gold standard (Hardt and Negri, 2000; 266). The move to floating currencies was followed, in various speeds, by the majority of governments. The floating of national currencies allowed for the trading of currencies themselves, rather than through physical trade. The trading of currencies for profit, whether nominally attached to commodities or not, is the basis of the international financial industry. This move was of massive historical significance; along with the development of the financial industry, the dropping of the Gold standard removed the guarantee of the ‘general equivalency’ of money. Instead, in a definitively postmodern – or feminine – manoeuvre, money no longer exists, there are only currencies[6]. Such a move is part of a historical development; money having moved from being an element of value itself, to being supported by an item of supposed value (the gold standard) to its current state as a purely virtual occurrence, given a presence only because we believe in the value of its presence.

Indeed, physical commodities are no longer the basis of much trade. Certainly the growth in physical trade, production and consumption continues, as the materiality of the climate crisis reveals. Nonetheless, increasingly commodities are traded simply as a placeholders for currencies – livestock might be bought in Euros only to be traded when the value of that currency rises – particularly through mathematical ‘derivative’ trading through which value is ‘derived’ via various instrument of finance trade, including hedging, options and swaps. This trading has established a certain distance from the ‘real’ economy, such that the material operation of economy in the sense of fulfilling ‘needs and wants’ of consumers is no longer operative. Instead the real economy – in the sense of value and influence – lies in the financial centres of the Western world, where value rises and falls based upon the second-order expectations of the fate of financial products developed only for monetary gain. The financial crisis that first became apparent in 2008 saw these self-destructive tendencies in action as the credit ‘bubble’ burst, most of all because people lost their faith in money. To a certain degree actors have come to realise that money does not exist and have withdrawn their confidence from the system. For this reason the main task of the Obama administration in handing over unthinkable amounts of US currency to their financial institutions, is to restore confidence in the value of money[7].

The financial industry, therefore, is the paradigmatic postmodern industry not only because it is without a general equivalent or sovereign exception but because it is based upon immaterial labour, cooperation, and communication. Because under empire cooperation has become inherent to labour in a way that it never has previously, labour power moves from variable capital (a force activated by capital itself) to capital itself; knowledge has become the key means of production. Hardt and Negri contend that:

Today, productivity, wealth and the creation of social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational and affective networks. In the expression of its own creative energies, immaterial labour thus seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism. (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 294)

Conversely, if knowledge is the most important means of production, then for the first time the seeds of a new order lie with the workers themselves. Workers no longer need capital to reproduce shared social life; the workers are already doing so in their everyday movements. Capital loses its organising function and becomes purely parasitic (Žižek, 2008a: 351). The material reproduction of society occurs in the workplace already in the forms of communication, cooperative and affective labour produced by the multitude. Rather than workers being solely operators of fixed capital, deploying the resources provided for work, the immaterial labourer is now a source of capital in itself; knowledge. The worker is thus a unit of variable capital, such that the economy no longer requires specific sources of capital for its reproduction[8].

Hardt and Negri suggest that this move, by which the knowledge inherent in labour power becomes the key means of production, produces a subversive potential in what they label the ‘multitude’: the germs of the future produced within capitalism. Thus,

from one perspective Empire stands clearly over the multitude and subjects it to the rule of its overarching machine, as a new Leviathan. At the same time, however, from the perspective of social productivity and creativity, from what we have been calling the ontological perspective, the hierarchy is reversed. The multitude is the real productive force of our social world, whereas Empire is a mere apparatus of capture that lives only off the vitality of the multitude. (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 62)

Therefore, for Hardt and Negri the multitude is the inherent form of resistance produced within capital. There may not be an outside within empire which provides a nodal point for the subversion of capital, rather this point is produced by capitalism itself; capital provides the seeds of its own destruction. If postmodern production is immaterial, then the most important means of production lies with the bodies and the minds of the workers. Capital is no longer machinery and tools but is increasingly immaterial in itself. As Žižek comments; “[i]t was Marx who emphasised how material production is always also the (re)production of the social relations within which it occurred; with today’s capitalism, however, the production of social relations is the immediate end/goal of production” (Žižek, 2006d: 262).

The role of the multitude – and here Hardt and Negri return to classical Marxism – is to become conscious of their position as both subject and object of history and come to determine the world themselves, to break free of capital and realise the ‘absolute’ democracy that they are already in the process of creating. The multitude is in the paradoxical position of both holding an inherent potential for resistance to the system yet being the point of subversion of that resistance; all that is required to formulate a political movement is a realisation of this power.

Again, we have reached a Marxist critique of ideology, whereby the worker requires an awareness of their circumstances in order to break free of their chains. Ironically, however, it is knowledge which has become the very object of production under empire. Thus, it is the reproduction of knowledge and social relations by the multitude which holds the potential for radical action, yet at the same time the ideological construction of capital – itself reproduced by the multitude, though in the implicit name of empire – prevents the realisation of that radical potential. If knowledge is power, within empire it is immanently contained by the power of capital.

Here, perhaps the most pertinent point is that it is difficult to determine the enemy within because of the sovereignty of ether and the ‘non-place’ of power within empire. Ironically, given the shared communicative mechanisms which define the multitude, the problem they experience is a lack of clear language, both in identifying the enemy and articulating the future (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 210). Once this can be established, and the multitude become conscious of their dominating status, all that is required is to locate and knock off of the nominal head: communism and absolute democracy are within reach, all that is to be done is to realise our fate. Yet, is this approach not, however, as Žižek suggests, confluent with the ultimate capitalist fantasy of frictionless capitalism, capitalism without governance, simply organising itself through the invisible hand of the market? (2006d: 263). That is, if Hardt and Negri imagine the multitude to be a point of resistance to capital within capital itself, the danger is that this logic is entirely confluent with its operation.

Whilst the multitude are a possible point of resistance against capitalism – any agent involved in the creation of the commons holds a radical potential – they remain a resistant group particular to capitalism. Moreover, rather than provide the hope for what Hardt and Negri label ‘absolute democracy’, the multitude have more in common with contemporary liberal democracy; both are based upon the exclusion of surplus labour. The ultimate risk of focusing political hope upon the multitude is that they will only expand the operation of capitalism.

The essential difference between Hardt and Negri’s empire and Žižek’s reading of capitalism as a modality of the Real is their conception of what is outside to capitalism. The former argue that the multitude can break free of the logic of capital from within capital itself, suggesting an alternative mode of production can develop within capitalism. We see this in the manifesto style statements which end Empire, in which they propose a minimum social wage, the right to global citizenship and reappropriation. The assumption is that the functioning of the multitude is such that this can occur outside of capital, yet within empire. Žižek, on the other hand, argues that there is no exterior to capital in this sense. Instead, not only would the guaranteed minimum income solution be drawn into a capitalist understanding of redistribution, justice, and the market but the multitude too will continue to be an element of capital – indeed, revealing a potentially more efficient functioning.

Symptomatically, for Žižek and for Hardt and Negri, there is little difference between the multitude and Bill Gates’ image of ‘frictionless’ capital. It is just that the former believe that the multitude can be detached from capital, whereas Žižek has no such illusions. Moreover, for Žižek the democracy of the multitude and frictionless capital are sadly entwined because they both require the same propeller for sovereign-less development; surplus-value. Thus, given the materiality of the problematic suggested in this thesis, it is not a matter of simply reproducing capitalism without capitalists – not only is this impossible (without capital itself, what would drive the organisation of the multitude?) but it would only serve to reproduce the reliance upon surplus which is the structuring factor behind environmental degradation.

In this sense the multitude cannot be considered to be a group in themselves. Rather, they arise only as a point of resistance to capitalism, just as the feminine is only possible by reference to the continued existence of the masculine. Rather than the immaterial labour of the multitude, it is the universality enabled by the unwanted horde of today’s political economy that provides hope for a radically different future. Thus empire is not without exception – it is ultimately not a form the Lacanian feminine – instead it operates via a disavowal of its exception, the excess of labour outside of even the multitude.

What Hardt and Negri miss is that the absolute democracy they believe can be developed from within empire is based upon the same exclusion which constitutes liberal democracy, that of the reserve army of labour. There is no reason to suggest that a democratic reconstruction of immaterial labour would include the currently excluded populations of the world any more than is currently the case. Instead, the immaterial surplus which is created by ‘the multitude’ is only generated on the basis of an exclusion; an exclusion which constitutes the wage-labour system. Empire is not without exception, it is only without an apparent governing exception. As has been thus far noted in this thesis, however, the governing exception is only one possible modality of the outside. More pertinent in terms of the global economy is not the diffusion of governing or managerial power but, rather, the (extimate) exclusion from the global economy.

Hardt and Negri, however, do not consider there to be any exclusion from either empire or the multitude. Symptomatic of this position is their definition of the proletariat, which is so wide as to diffuse the real difference within this category, particularly in terms of suffering. Here Hardt and Negri state, “we understand proletariat as a broad category that includes all those whose labour is directly or indirectly exploited by and subjected to capitalist norms of production and reproduction” (Hardt and Negri, 2000: 52).

To compare the wealth of a professional sportsman and the poverty of a third-world farmer – both equally subsumed into capitalist exploitation – is to lose sight of the contours of exploitation and suffering. Moreover, it is to lose the reason why we oppose capital at all; the necessary suffering it imposes. For Hardt and Negri, “exploitation occurs but it is increasingly hard, perhaps impossible to designate a place of exploitation – the non-place of exploitation – exploitation can no longer be localised and quantified – instead they are universal qualities” (ibid.: 209). Consequently; “although exploitation and domination are still experienced concretely on the flesh of the multitude, they are nonetheless amorphous in such a way that it seems there is no place left to hide” (ibid.: 211).

Hardt and Negri addressed this point in the follow up text to Empire, Multitude (2004). Here they note the suggestion that those who are excluded from the waged labour are also excluded from the Multitude. Instead, they argue that the excluded are not in fact outside of the biopolitical realm but are, in fact, an integral to its reproduction such that, at a general level, “biopolitical production – including the production of knowledge, information, linguistic forms, networks of communication and collaborative social relationships – tends to involve all of society, including the poor” (ibid.: 130)

Thus, whilst the absolute poor are strictly excluded from capitalist production, they are not to be excluded from political organisation. Hardt and Negri acknowledge the Marxist conception of the reserve army of labour and the role of excess labour in maintaining the wage-labour system, particularly in the globalised labour market with its large ‘dumps’ of unproductive population groups. Nonetheless, they reject the idea of an industrial reserve army because there is not the unity that the term ‘army’ implies. Instead, the nature of employment today is such that there is little division between the employed and unemployed and, “there is no reserve in the sense that no labour power is outside the processes of social production” (ibid.: 131). Moreover, even those who may be technically in reserve employment are still socially productive.

Hardt and Negri’s conception of global unemployment largely misses this point, however. Whilst the absolute poor might be culturally rich in some areas and may well contribute to forces of social cooperation, the extent of the stretch is revealed when Hardt and Negri argue;

In many respects the poor are actually extraordinarily wealthy and productive. From the perspective of biodiversity, for example, some of the poorest regions of the world, generally speaking the global south, have the greatest wealth of different plant and animal species, whereas the rich global north is home to relatively few. (ibid.: 131).

Whilst diverse biological resources and the knowledge that goes with these resources may have value, it is little compensation for today’s poor. Hardt and Negri may emphasis the cooperative productivity of the linguistic community and its potential for resistance but this is of little consequence for empty stomachs (ibid.: 132). The authors almost glamorise the lives of those who live in squalor, not only because their historical ontic positioning is a primary point of resistance but also because of their simultaneous cultural unity and diversity. If “part of the wealth of migrants is their desire for something more, their refusal to accept the ways things are” (ibid.: 133) then Hardt and Negri seem to be dangerously down-playing their often desperate plight.

Although Hardt and Negri acknowledge the misery of migrant workers and the like, ultimately they prove unable to fully recognise the structural position of those groups:

Our point rather is that these should be conceived not as a matter of exclusion but one of differential inclusion, not as a line of division between workers and the poor nationally and globally but as hierarchies within the common conditions of poverty. All of the multitude is productive and all of it is poor. (ibid.: 134)

Differential inclusion appears very close to the Lacanian concept of extimacy and Žižek’s understanding of the concrete universal, whereby the point of exclusion is simultaneously included within that from which it is included. Hardt and Negri may be correct in asserting that we should not insist upon a sharp differential between the poor and the unemployed. Nonetheless, where they argue that the absolute poor should simply be included within the larger grouping of the multitude we should still maintain the concept of the reserve army of labour. I do not wish to engage in a game of ‘enlarging the concept’, attempting to map exactly who it is who might fit this category – the distinction is more abstract. In actually existing conditions there may be little difference between the social interactions of the poor and the very poor, the waged and the unwaged. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that globally, the wage-labour system only operates because of the excess condition of labour.

This operation is seen on a global scale. Yes, there may be some degree of cooperative solidarity across nations and cultures for those who can afford such technologies but employment conditions remain dependent upon excess labour populations. The strongest effect of the process of globalisation is not transnational class solidarity but the ability to export employment. If labour costs increase in China then jobs are likely to go to a poorer nation such as Bangladesh. This is not to suggest that we could walk down an alley in Bangladesh and divide up the lumpenproletariat from the proletariat but the operation of the reserve army of labour is much more real than Hardt and Negri and willing to acknowledge.

Surplus Labour Beyond the Feminine Multitude

While the multitude may be actively reproducing society through communication, we must still come to acknowledge the structuring role of the ‘part with no part’ which is truly supporting capitalism – an excess which acts as an exception beyond the apparent feminity of the ‘postmodern’ economy envisaged by Hardt and Negri. These people largely lie in these massive urban slums – slums in which all of the global three billion strong population increase is predicted to occur – unemployment has reached meaningless levels, in some places reaching 80% such that employment being a marginal exception. This concept may remain abstract but the suffering of those whose only claim to wealth is as a linguistic community is very Real.

The excluded – a surplus of labour – are truly the necessary and constitutive exception which must be excluded for the continued functioning of the system, and so it is with capital and its reserve army of labour. Surplus labour, therefore, constitutes the capitalist form of the class relationship. It is the exclusion of these masses which allows for the capitalist form of the production and distribution of surplus value. This disparate grouping, which might otherwise be labelled the lumpenproletariat, is the new breed of entrepreneur, a neo-liberal dream in a Hobbesian nightmare. These enterprising business-workers sell whatever they can to survive, whether it is knick-knacks or their bodies. Their inadvertent subversion of intellectual property in the huge market for inauthentic designer merchandise may be an example of a multitude-esque anti-capitalism but there is nothing liberating about the circumstances of their lifestyle.

In this conception – against Laclau, the New Left, and the AESA – my argument has returned full circle, although a little wiser, to Marx’s conception of the revolutionary social grouping. The twist, however, is that no revolutionary potential lies with surplus labour itself. There will be no storming of the White House from outside the slums of Bangladesh. Nor will the excess workers of the world throw off their shackles and overthrow their now unnecessary bosses. Instead the revolutionary potential lies in the tension, the gap or lack, between this excess and the relations of enjoyment which rely upon it.

It is the management of the tension which this gap creates that Hardt and Negri, as well as Madra and Özselcuk, do not consider. On the one hand there exist the postmodern corporations, characterised by Hardt and Negri’s immaterial labour. On the other side – generally the other side of the world – is the remaining material labour, a capitalist historical tribute to industrial era production and suffering. The multitude is not self-organising; it still relies upon a managerial function. For this reason, while Hardt and Negri, along with Madra and Özselcuk, are incorrect to assert that capital is purely parasitic, capital does not simply sit back and suck up profit but has a vital organising function not only in terms of organisation and strategy but also in bringing the two sides of capital together and managing the tension (Žižek, 2008a: 359).

I appear, therefore, to have reached an impasse, both in terms of the development of the argumentation in this thesis and more importantly in political action against the hegemony of capital. In terms of the later, it appears that not only has capitalism subsumed the entirely of the production and reproduction of shared social life – such that any alternative production of shared social life will automatically be drawn into capitalism – but we are also left with no ‘natural’ form of politics that would provide an alternative to capitalism.

In this thesis, I have thus far rejected any essentialism which stems from a predestined chosen revolutionary group. Nonetheless, a different kind of approach – that of the political, rather than politics – stemming from Žižek’s reading of both Lacan and Marx, suggests that the most productive form of anti-capitalism today is associated with the existence of this excluded group that I have constructed as surplus labour. This potential comes not from the group itself, nor any alternative economic construction that might attempt to include this group but, rather, a strategic manipulation of the tension that exists between the ideological narratives of the global West and the necessary exclusions from this conception of shared social life – that the wage-labour system operates only on the basis of a surplus of labour which cannot be acknowledged within Western civilisation itself. To restate this in base terms, the tension within capitalism lies in the disavowed Truth that capitalism is constructed in such a manner that for the living standards of Western civilisation to continue unfettered, an excess of workers must remain outside of the wage labour system, and as a consequence of this status, the quality and length of their lives are significantly reduced.

The revolutionary potential here lies in the intrusion of this disavowed element of our civilisation into the ideological narrative of the West, whether in relation to justice, equality, freedom or some other high-minded abstract ideal, to potentially cause a revolutionary dislocation in the structure of that narrative. This disruption has the potential to open up space for alternative modes of political action. How these responses occur, as well as generating a dislocation in the first place, is the battle of politics.

Moreover, it is the acknowledgement of the presence of surplus labour in relation to class struggle which allows for this potential. Although much of this chapter has been dedicated to rejecting Madra and Özselcuk’s work, their work on the symbolic structure of class has some value. That is, although Žižek does identify the Lacanian structure of class struggle, he only makes an implicit reference to the history of Marxism. He does this not as a lapse in scholarship but, rather, through an ontological commitment to the Real status of class struggle. Nonetheless, as we noted in Chapter Three, reading the Real through Žižek’s concept of (concrete) universality allows for an identification of the point of exclusion in relation to class struggle. This is a vital point, and shall be a central focus point in the final two chapters.

These chapters concentrate upon formulating a Žižekian-inspired approach to the contradictions of global capitalism. Thus far I have rejected both traditional Marxist politics and the production of alternative forms of shared social life based upon Lacanian psychoanalysis. Moreover, this chapter has illustrated Žižek’s construction of the ontic structure of capitalism, one that limits the range of political action available. My Žižekian response begins from this point, considering a reading of class struggle which provides opportunity for political action, and a number of political strategies that stem from Žižek’s work, including the utopian demand of the ‘communist hypothesis’.

[1] These laws, however, came to be seen as a restriction upon the activities of capital.

[2]By contrast, Homer (2001: 14), although suggesting that Žižek’s rehabilitation of class is ‘to be welcomed’ (ibid.: 14), contends that Žižek’s lack of positive definition of class has meant that the successful integration of Marxian politics and class struggle into his project has been prevented by his adherence to Lacanian psychoanalysis.

[3] Dialogue between Laclau and Žižek almost reaches this point in their debate over the value of Populism (Laclau, 2006; Žižek, 2006a).

[4] Indeed social networking sites have taken this model further than print media such that the later are trying to utilise the methods of social networking sites in order to increase online revenues enough to compensate for falling hard copy sales.

[5] We shall focus on Jameson’s work in Chapter Eight.

[6] Interestingly, in a Laclauian dynamic, although money itself does not exist, this does not mean that the international trading market exists as a series of particular currencies alone. Instead, one currency – the US Dollar – come to take the place of money, acting as a hegemonic general equivalent.

[7] One of the more interesting elements of the financial crisis was the confusion amongst the general public as to the contraction of the economy – the paradigmatic question here being ‘Where did all the money go?’ as if someone had to have ‘the money’, that it could not simply be lost. The (comedic) illusion here is not that we tragically had money and then lost it but that the money never existed in the first place. It seems, however, that most investors were without a philosophical sense of humour.

[8] That the capitalist is largely redundant was noted by Marx himself (Özselcuk & Madra, 2005: 87)

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Chapter Eight: Communist Hypothesis – Impossible Utopia or Utopian Impossibility

Posted on May 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

The past seven chapters have constructed a response to the incommensurability between regional underdevelopment and global overconsumption, a response which is also a reflection upon the kinds of political action that might stem from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, and from Žižek’s work in particular. Moreover, although this consideration of politics – or rather the politics of the political – is a contextual response, it also reflects on the state of Marxist politics today. This construction has produced a strategic approach based upon an identification of the primary antagonism haunting capitalism today: surplus labour. In response to the status of surplus labour, I have suggested that Žižek’s reading of the Lacanian (ethical) dialectic produces a number of possible positions in relation to the anxiety and tension of the Real as embodied by surplus labour.

These positions, however, remain purely strategic in the sense that they suggest no future normative conception of shared social life in themselves: one cannot attempt to institutionalise the practice of subtractive politics in same manner as Laclau suggested that contingency might become a form of radical democracy. This strategic positioning resonates with both the impossibility of transposing Lacanian ethics into a substantive form of collective normativity as well as with Žižek’s insistence upon the historical limitations of productive politics.

Yet, whilst I have come to argue that this approach to politics is an effective response to global capital, the interpretation of Žižek’s work as being a kind of political strategising also appears confluent with the accusations directed at Žižek by his critics. Geoff Boucher, for example, argues:

Žižek has been able to create a remarkable new social theory … but the conclusions towards which Žižek is driven, apparently on the basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, are nothing less than extraordinary and tend to undermine any confidence we might have in his complex theory. (Boucher, 2004: 1)

Whilst we might disagree with Boucher’s conclusion in regards to the consequences of Žižek’s work, thus far this text has not done much to dispel the contention that whilst Žižek’s work is a productive form of theory – and this theory has been put to use in analysis of the structure of capitalism and politics today – Žižek’s reliance upon Lacanian principles posits a structural limitation to his political approach. This is certainly Laclau’s contention when he states that “Žižek’s thought is not organised around a truly political reflection but is, rather, a psychoanalytic discourse which draws its examples from the politico-ideological field” (Laclau, 2000a: 289, original emphasis). Thus, while Žižek utilises psychoanalysis as a mode of political intervention and a study of politics itself, his theoretical commitments do not provide a sufficient base from which to construct a radical leftist political imaginary.

As such, both Boucher and Laclau’s rejection of Žižek’s work as a political force is based upon Žižek’s refusal to enter into debate about the shape of the future. Despite its avowed allegiance to the cause of the globally downtrodden, along with a faith in the tenets of anti-capitalist discourse and of Marxism as necessary elements of this allegiance, this thesis has thus far used Žižek’s work in a similar manner. I have suggested that whilst Žižek may also share similar points of identification, nothing exists in his work that might suggest that Žižek offers a different image of the future.

This somewhat tragic account, however, has suspended two vital elements of Žižek’s work. One of these has been apparent from the start of his publishing career, the other emerging only recently. The first relates to the matter of normativity. Although Žižek’s approaches towards politics, as constructed in the previous chapter, remain strategic in the sense that they are means rather than an end, they still serve a political commitment to material equality that is seemingly elided in both Žižek’s work and this text. This disavowed commitment becomes apparent when we engage with the second element of Žižek’s work that has thus far been suspended: that of Žižek’s recent references to the communist hypothesis. Such a notion returns to the question of Marxist politics. If Žižek’s work engages with the domain of the political, rather than politics itself, it nonetheless works towards a particular end. Thus far I have re-presented this goal as anti-capitalism but the reference to communism appears to strike a more positive position.

Although Žižek’s work has always had a Marxist flavour and has cheekily hinted at an affinity with communism[1], he has been reluctant to take positions outside of an avowed anti-capitalism, certainly nothing that would have allowed Žižek to speak of ‘our side’ as he does in his 2009 text First as Tragedy, then as Farce. In this chapter, I shall consider three factors in relation to this orientation and do so in the context of my response to global capitalism. The first pertains to Žižek’s use of the communist hypothesis as an historical form of politics. If I have previously rejected alternative interventions, such as Hardt and Negri’s, because they would immediately be drawn into the logic of capital, how is it that this ‘hypothesis’ is able to avoid the same fate?

The second factor relates to the question of normativity and Marxist politics to which I previously alluded. Although Žižek clearly holds a commitment to Marxist politics, this allegiance appears more explicitly theoretical than political. Indeed, whilst Žižek has battled to restore the salience of Marxism today, he has rejected contemporary attempts to rehabilitate (post) Marxist politics, including the politics of Laclau as well as Hardt and Negri. Moreover, Žižek has also dismissed those alternative – in the sense that they do not currently exist – approaches to the question of ethics and normativity, such as Stavrakakis’ conception of partial jouissance, thereby implicitly holding that we are struck within a masculine construction of politics.

Moreover, Laclau’s and Stavrakakis’ works have been cast aside because of their commitments to what might be deemed a ‘democratic’ hypothesis (which, incidentally, restricts the dialectical reading of Lacanian ethics that Stavrakakis seeks). Given his rejection of both Marxist and Lacanian readings of political normativity, we must ask how Žižek is able to hold to a communist hypothesis that is congruent with his commitment to Lacanian theory. How is it that Žižek is able to hold to this position – what we might deem a ‘big idea’ – without falling prey to either the essentialism of traditional Marxism or the impotence of the non-utopian Left?

Here I wish to suggest that the communist hypothesis marks an advancement in Žižek’s work rather than a contradiction because he does not seek to fill out the hypothesis with the presence of a specific future but, rather, indexes the existence of a communist hypothesis to contemporary conditions of possibility – specifically, the exclusion of surplus labour which allows for the continued functioning of capital. This, however, does not take us much beyond Žižek’s current work. It is his standard Marxist reading of capitalism in the name of the new signifier: the communist hypothesis. In order to produce a new horizon, the direct contours of Žižek’s work need to be surpassed in order that its inherent utopianism might become apparent. The reference to a disavowed utopianism may not surprise Žižek’s critics, who appear convinced that Žižek is, in Laclau’s words, “waiting for the Martians” (Laclau, 2005: 232).

In this chapter, however, and as a manner of concluding the argumentation, I will suggest that a utopian reading of the communist hypothesis not only adds to the strategic impetus identified in the previous chapter but also returns to the question of the shape of the future to Žižek’s work. Here I refer to utopia not as an impossible place – one that could be identified with the fantasmatic fullness of jouissance – but, rather, as a process that hinges upon the impossibility of the utopian itself. In doing so, I will again have cause to return to the question of impossibility, representation and of exclusion in late capitalism.

This brings us to the final question of this chapter, and indeed the thesis itself. Returning to my original concern – that of global poverty and environmental degradation – I will discuss what it means to practice politics in this manner: if within capitalism there are any number of administrative programmes that could reduce the suffering of many without having to risk a revolutionary refashioning of history, why is it that we should hold to the impossible utopianism of the communist hypothesis as the form of politics today? In responding to this question, I reach towards the heart of the normative commitments that underwrite this text. Let me first begin by introducing the idea of the communist hypothesis.

The Communist Hypothesis

Žižek’s reference to the communist hypothesis begins in earnest in How to Begin from the Beginning (Žižek, 2009b) and First as Tragedy, then as Farce (Žižek, 2009a)[2]. Here Žižek introduces the hypothesis by way of reference to Badiou who has argued that,

The communist hypothesis remains the right hypothesis and I see no other … if this hypothesis is to be abandoned, then it is not worth doing anything in the field of collective action. Without the perspective of communism, without this kind of idea, nothing in the historical and political future is of such a kind of interest to the philosopher. Each individual can pursue their private business and we won’t mention it again … (Badiou, 2008: 115)

Žižek (2009b) repeats Badiou’s argument without contention, adding that one should not read the hypothesis as a ‘regulative idea’ of the kind that might lead to an ethical socialism with an a priori norm[3]. Rather the communist hypothesis must be referenced to actual contradictions within capitalism. As Žižek states:

To treat communism as an eternal Idea implies that the situation which generates it is no less eternal that the antagonism to which communism reacts will always be here. From which it is only one step to a deconstructive reading of communism as a dream of presence, of abolishing all alienating representation; a dream which thrives on its own impossibility. (Žižek, 2009b)

Instead, Žižek argues that we use the communist hypothesis in order to contest the contradictions of capitalism, as identified at the beginning of the previous chapter: environmental degradation, digital property, biogenetics, and politico-economic exclusion. It is this last antagonistic point, which has been identified as surplus labour, which provides the key structuring point to capitalism and is the basis of Žižek’s reference to the communist hypothesis.

The only way to break our historical deadlock is by reference to the communist hypothesis, a hypothesis which itself can only come into being against a horizon of the contradictions of capital. Perhaps more accurately, although the presence of the communist hypothesis is necessary to generate a utopian demand, it is not the content of a communist discourse that will provoke change but whether capitalism is able to contain its own contradictions. The task of this thesis, and any form of politics which attempts to invoke such a hypothesis, is to practice a form of analysis that exposes the constitutive contradictions of global capitalism. It is these contradictions, rather than any sense of a new radical imaginary, which opens up the prospect of utopian demands and a history beyond capitalism.

Another way of framing this point is to highlight that Žižek’s reference to the communist hypothesis appears to operate only by way of an identification with the contradictions of capitalism: it is the inability to integrate surplus labour into capitalism, such that we might have full employment and the genuine possibility for material equality, that justifies a specific reference to communism rather than to democracy or to fascism. Communism is not guaranteed by history, rationalism, or the big Other to be the form of political being but, rather, signals the point of impossibility within capitalism. In this sense, the communist hypothesis, along with the utopian demand to which we shall soon refer, is an extension of the strategic practice of concrete universality.

In response to our first question, therefore, Žižek is able to posit the communist hypothesis at this time in history because it is a response to the contradictions of capitalism rather than an abstracted ideal position in itself. We must consider, however, why he utilises the specific reference to communism rather than a negative (in the sense of their positioning within capital) reference to the proletariat.

This position becomes more evident when we consider Badiou’s reading of the hypothesis (Badiou, 2008: 105-117). Badiou is more implicit in his identification, claiming that there have been two previous sequences of the hypothesis: the first from the French revolution to the Paris commune (its establishment) and the second – its first attempt at realisation – running from the Russian revolution to the end of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. For Badiou, our task today is to determine the content of the third sequence, which is yet to be constructed.

Nonetheless, the communist hypothesis that might emerge for this current period is not without inherent content. Communism, Badiou suggests, would eliminate both inequality of wealth and the division of labour. Moreover, distinctions between manual and intellectual labour will disappear, along with differences between town and country. Naturally, the state itself will become unnecessary. Thus, although Badiou does not specifically identify the shape of the programme that will come to embody this hypothesis, his emphasis is on the value of the signifier ‘communism’ and its relationship to equality and economy rather than the epistemological and ontological of the concerns that have pre-occupied the Left after the discursive turn.

Ergo, whilst Žižek’s reference to the communist hypothesis as a utopian impossibility is confluent with his earlier work, it is still haunted by the productivism suggested by Badiou and the history of communism. Moreover, Žižek’s specific reference to surplus labour as the contradiction of capitalism that justifies this reference to communism suggests a grander normative commitment than is explicit in his work. Let us take one issue at a time. First, I shall consider the utopian demand that is part of the strategic embodiment of the communist hypothesis in some detail, with particular reference to the work of Fredric Jameson on utopia, before returning to the question of the normativity that drives such a hypothesis.

Utopia: Demand the Impossible!

Utopia is an impulse, a desire for something different from the existing. In this sense, utopianism has been referenced to the prospect of radical political change in the name of a perfect future society. The utopian urge, however, does not necessarily take the form of a desire for a radically different form of being. Rather, today the elementary utopian demand is embodied in the conservative hope that, ultimately, society does exist – that life can be managed in such a manner that nirvana is possible within existing structures. In this sense, we can regard the utopian desire as the desire for jouissance, a desire for the impossible to exist.

At first glance then, utopia – despite its radical pretensions – is a counter-intuitive position for any form of politics taking its orientation from a Lacanian-inspired psychoanalysis. Conversely, a separate modality of utopia can be posited in a way that relates to the Real rather than to jouissance (if one can momentarily abstract from the dialectic of lack and excess which defines social life). This focuses on the impossibility of realising utopia as the key to the utopian demand.

Here we can consider that utopian thought is not radically divided from Lacanian theory but, rather, at its heart. This is so both in the sense of a Lacanian critique of fantasy and of its reading of the conditions of possibility in relation to radical political change. It is this possibility – of utopia as the very suggestion that another mode of being is possible without the imaginary coherence of the development of that mode – that makes Žižek’s politics a radical (rather than the conservative, or nihilistic) position that many of his critics have suggested. In particular, as we shall develop, the rehabilitation of the image of communism by way of a reference to the constitutive contradictions of capitalism rather than the jouissance of the ideal provides a potentially effective and reasoned political intervention beyond that imagined by his critics. However, the notion of utopia has appeared to receive little critical attention within Žižek’s work, often being swiftly rejected. Conversely, the development of the communist hypothesis suggests a utopian element underdeveloped in Žižek’s work thus far. For this reason, in this next section I shall expand on the notion of utopia, with particular reference to Jameson’s work.

Contemporary Utopian desires

Today, as Jameson contends (2004:35), utopia appears to be an unnecessary term. Our civilisation is characterised by the existence of two distinct worlds[4], neither with much use for the concept. In the first, unprecedented wealth and pleasures – both real and virtual – have made dreams of utopia appear redundant. In the other, in which the material realities of everyday life remain overwhelming, utopianism appears equally unnecessary or perhaps unfeasible. Yet, it is because of this split that utopianism is required today more than ever.

As Eagleton has come to suggest (2000: 174-175), the true utopians today – here he uses the term in a negative, idealistic sense – are those who believe that the future will be essentially the same as the past, although for those with a multi-cultural bent, more options may be available in the food court. For the Fukuyamaist apologists of capital, explicit reference to utopianism suggests a dangerous misrecognition of historical progress; the end (of historical struggle) is near and we have arrived at the salvation of the earth. Yet, for those whose existence consists of too much earth and precious little salvation, this declaration may appear to be premature. In regards to history, then, utopianism today stands in firm opposition to the kind of instrumental ‘common sense’ of political movements which cannot consider their own historical conditionality and which limit themselves to movements that appear feasible and reasonable – Sachs’ work at the beginning of the thesis being a prime example (Moylan, 1998: 2). Today, this is not the kind of thinking that is required and for this reason we must invoke the dormant beast that is utopia – the pertinent question being, which type of utopia?

Despite believers in the end-of-history thesis arguing that the age of utopian thinking is over, paradoxically we can identify this as the primary mode of utopian thinking today. As Žižek argues in support of Jameson, today the most apparent point of utopianism – and the most illusionary – is the belief that the invisible mechanisms of the market can bring about the ‘optimal state of society’. Additionally, Žižek adds that the most ideological position today is the rejection of ideology itself. As a corollary it is anti-utopianism that forms the strongest ideological position in our civilisation and forms the primary blockage or point of closure which prevents the development of a radical imaginary (Žižek, 2000e: 324). Nonetheless, despite the utopian demand in anti-utopian practice of (cynically) administrated politics, utopia still appears to be an outdated concept.

The apparent impotence of utopia can be indexed to the general ‘crisis of representation’ brought on by postmodernity (Jameson, 2005: 212). It is no coincidence, Jameson suggests, that the rise of postmodernity, with its rejection of representation and the prospect of any anchoring guarantee for social or political life, has coincided with the dismissal of a utopian demand for an alternative and the corresponding conservative era of the Washington consensus. Moreover, as we shall see in the debate that follows, the question of the representation of impossibility itself deeply informs the prospects of rehabilitating utopian politics today.

Much of the debate amongst theorists of utopia rests upon the dichotomy between the possible and the impossible, between utopia as the image of the ideal society and utopia as that which reveals the limits of our imagination or situation. The work of the supporting characters in this thesis (Žižek excluded) in effect take the impossibility of representation, and hence, utopianism as their starting point: Laclau’s rejection of the possibility of society; Stavrakakis’ hope for a society structured around partial enjoyment and Madra; and Özselcuk’s attempt to rearticulate class struggle. At the same time, however, all these theorists posit a certain utopian appeal for an alternative mode of being: a different form of representation that is itself an articulation of an unexpressed utopian demand. In this sense, whilst the particular articulations of utopianism presented by these theorists have been the subject of critique throughout this thesis, it is only once utopianism as the fantasy of full jouissance is dismissed that the political potential of utopia in our time can be unleashed. Perhaps the point to which these movements best speak is that utopianism cannot take a singular form but, rather, is an expression of a grander transcendental movement.

This transcendental effect can be instantiated in an infinitive number of particular expressions, none of which speak to a singular truth about utopia but are rather an expression of the subtextual form of the utopian demand. Because of this effect, particularly amongst those who study utopian thought from a positivist bent (or those who critique such a bent within a utopian lens), much emphasis is placed upon subtle delineation of the various instantiations of utopia. Jameson, for example, defines two different approaches to the imagination of utopia: the removal of the ‘root of all evil’ and the ‘anonymous bliss’ of the patient blueprinting a utopian society. These Jameson calls the ‘model railroads of the mind’ taking various written forms including the manifesto and the constitution (Jameson, 2004: 40). Leopold (2007) extends these options, adding intentional communities (which, despite their limited range, may contain elements of both of Jameson’s approaches) and literary/imaginary utopias. This plethora of positions, however, can all be considered responses to the same sense of impossibility, that society (and utopia) does not exist.

These forms can be considered to be a response to the operation that Ruth Levitas (2007: 290), following Ernst Bloch (1986), identifies as the fundamental utopian expression: that utopia is at its core ‘the expression of the desire for a better way of being’, a principle that Bloch designated as ‘hope’, a desire for something that is missing. Here Bloch, in terms not far divorced from Lacanian theory, contends that human experience is defined by lack and longing, a negativity that cannot be expressed in any way other than through the imagination of its fulfilment. In this sense utopian thought does not require the wholesale imagination of new worlds, although this construction is an articulation of the utopian desire. Instead, these constructions are an expression of a larger demand for jouissance (Levitas, 2007: 291).

Indexing utopia to jouissance suggests that, rather than taking the form of elaborate visions, a utopian urge appears in the everyday performance of social life. In this sense, utopia cannot be juxtaposed against ideology – utopia seeking to change society, ideology to maintain it – as Karl Mannheim contended (Mannheim cited in Levitas, 2007: 289). Instead, in this sense utopia is entirely ideological; utopia is an expression of jouissance as lies at the heart of ideology. The everyday performance of utopia, therefore, is the performance of jouissance in its many forms; the elementary demand of the utopian/ideological position is that, contra-Laclau, ‘society does exist’.

It is the critique of this mantra that forms the basis of psychoanalytic criticism of utopianism. Indeed, this thesis itself has largely entailed an undermining of the concept; that the universal does not exist, enjoyment and the class relationship are impossible. This analysis has suggested that attempts to attain the fullness of jouissance or utopia must violently exclude a dystopian element that cannot be named (Alexander, 1998). Theodore Adorno has stated in this regard, as part of his rejection of an abstract understanding of utopia, that;

It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces, and there is a straight line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps and extermination so far off in Poland that each of our countrymen can convince himself that he cannot hear the screams of pain. That it is model of an unhampered capacity for happiness. (1974: 62-63)

Thus, for many, and not limited to psychoanalytic theorists, utopian politics can be deemed unrealistic at best, dangerous at worst (Gray, 2008). As has been discussed, however, utopia does not just exist in what we might deem ‘grand’ ideological meta-narratives. Rather, like jouissance, the utopian urge continues today, even in our apparently post-ideological society – the ‘end of history’ is the articulation of utopianism today. The main form of utopia today is not nostalgic Leftists or religious extremists but, rather, the ideology of the market and of ‘democratic freedom’. Here utopian desire is not expressed through belief but, instead, the actions of the commodity fetishists who require just one more item to achieve the promised jouissance.

Moreover, the utopian impulse does not exist only within capitalist discourse, nor does it correspond only to a singular or transcendental sense of the good (Kenny, 2007). As I have illustrated so far, both Laclau and Stavrakakis, in postulating versions of the ideal society, have produced a form of anti-utopian utopianism, or, to paraphrase ‘partial-utopianism’. The emphasis here, as Žižek would suggest, should be on the utopianism, rather than the partial. The problem, for Žižek, is that any form of utopian/jouissance that remains within existing understandings of shared social life is destined to remain utopian only in a limited sense. Moreover, the strength of capitalism is such that any alternative form of imaginary can only become another supplement to the capitalist ‘utopia’.

This distinction can perhaps be designated as the difference Jameson posits between utopian fancy and utopian imagination (2005: 214). Although both correspond to the same utopian urge, fancy and imagination signal vitally different articulations of utopia. Utopian fancy corresponds to the detail and particulars upon which utopia becomes attached. As such, it remains a conservative form, even if its content contains a radical demand. By contrast, utopian imagination consists of the form of utopia that allows for the articulation of fancy. Although the dualism, like all dichotomies, is subject to occasional oppositional reversals, it is this distinction which marks the changing orientation in this chapter; from fancy to imagination, or rather the limitations of imagination.

The Utopian Impossibility

An alternative mode of utopia is suggested by Jameson, and implicitly by Žižek, that is vitally different from that just discussed. Both argue that the utopia we require today is the utopia of the impossible. While identifying this position as emblematic of the utopian urge, Jameson suggests that the true utopia emerges at the very limits of our imagination. Here I take reference from Thomas More’s original conception of utopia, using Greek terms to bring together ‘no place’ and ‘good place’. This suggests both a tragic and comedic face to utopia. Utopia can be tragic – a place we will never reach – or comedic – the utopia lies in the very impossibility of its realisation.

Jameson’s utopia, therefore, does not cling to an alternative conception of society but, rather, relies upon the build up of energy around the very limits to our imagination. In this sense, it changes the emphasis from the content of utopia to the form of utopia. Here the impossibility of utopia does not relate to the practical impossibilities of political life but, instead, to the limitations of our imaginations. Imagination, of course, is not limited to the fancy of the individual. Rather, as Jameson himself has developed, imagination is always a social creation. Thus the limitations of our imagination are always a political limit, it is the limit of what exists within the political order. In this regard, Jameson’s oft-quoted remark that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism signals a failure of imagination that marks the presence of an orthodox, or positive, utopia.

Thus, the utopian text invokes our constitutive inability to imagine utopia itself (Jameson, 1982: 153). In this sense, utopia appears only as an absence and any attempt to name this absence produces an ideological closure that converts the utopian demand for an anticipatory appeal into a reactionary state. Thus, for Jameson, utopia is at its most effective when it cannot be imagine:;

Its function lies not in helping us to imagine a better future but, rather, in demonstrating our utter incapacity to imagine such a future – our imprisonment in a non-utopian present without historicity of futurity – so as to reveal the ideological closure of the system in which we are somehow trapped and confined (2004: 46).

Utopia then suggests a complete overhaul of society, one that will produce much anxiety and repression of the utopian imagination (Jameson, 1998: 75). Although this anxiety can cause us to continue to grasp at the illusions which cohere our sense of being and hold us to the limitations of our current order, anxiety itself presents an energy from which to move forward (ibid.: 51-53).

A profound difficulty presents itself at this point: of finding a way to imagine an alternative future without foreclosing the possibility of it coming into being. What we require is not a utopian urge to fill out the failure of capitalism, either through capitalism itself or its cultural supplements but, rather, a desire to move beyond capitalism to a society which is yet to be imagined. This desire constitutes not only an approach to the Real but the jouissance of impossibility itself. That is, the impossibility of imagining utopia does not bring an end to jouissance but, instead, persists in the form of jouissance. This form of utopia does not dismiss jouissance as an illusion but, instead, suggests that jouissance drives every attempt to imagine utopia. The vital difference between the forms of utopia is that positive forms attempt to locate this utopian place whereas the impossible utopia plays upon the urge to go beyond the existing. As such, Žižek does not suggest an alternative form of enjoyment but, rather, posits a strategic manipulation of jouissance. The key difference here is between the fantasy of full jouissance provided by utopia-as-content, and the subversion of alternative political imaginaries through utopia-as-form.

Whilst this form of utopianism leads itself to accusations of negativity, positive forms are easily subverted. Jameson argues that the designation of specific points of protest is contrary to the effectiveness of utopianism. When the specific contradictions become apparent, the tendency is to focus political demands upon these points. At this point, however, the utopian imagination becomes limited and what might have been a revolutionary demand gives way to practical political programmes (2004: 45). A salient example of this process in these times is the Green movement. Although Green ideology at times suggests energy for widespread change that might be considered utopian, it has become too easy to divert this enthusiasm into smaller scale processes that only serve to supplement the interests of capital and escalate ecological collapse. A utopian urge certainly existed at the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference but it was openly submitted to legislative demands which subverted the possibility of radical action.

Nonetheless, Žižek’s sense of utopianism takes its form from the expression of actually occurring antagonisms with capitalism. Whilst he acknowledges that capital is able to include and pacify most of its symptoms, he designates the excluded or hungry populations of the world as the specific contradiction which holds a vital, and thus, utopian status. The difference between the identification of surplus labour as the antagonism within capitalism and other specific points of protest is that the former is unable to be included within capitalism. That is, while the utopian demand inherent in this necessary exclusion can be subverted in various ideological measures, such as charitable aid or the displacement of the antagonism to an exterior cause, the concrete universality of surplus labour cannot be integrated within capitalism and for this reason remains the impossible point of a utopian demand.

Nonetheless, a political battle remains to identify this point as impossible. As such, the central contention of Jameson’s work around utopia appears to be that the utopian urge is at its strongest when it cannot be imagined: utopia appears at those points at which a political demand emerges which is incommensurable with the established horizon of understanding. To refer back to examples which have run throughout this thesis, if an immigrant protest forces the intrusion of the necessity of the surplus of labour which it provides and upon the wage-labour system in a manner that cannot be easily subverted, we are experiencing utopia.

Under late capitalism, however, these demands tend to be met with administrative solutions whether by those in political power, or the protestors themselves. Indeed, the most common critique of Žižek addressed in this document is that he does not suggest a manifesto style approach to be followed. Instead, subverting this kind of subversion, as Daly puts it, is the aim of Žižek’s work. Žižek – as constructed in this thesis – attempts to force out the inherent contradictions of capitalism, not that they can then be addressed but precisely to show that they cannot be taken into account. Indeed, the purpose of the previous chapter was to consider the strategic possibilities for enacting this kind of politics.

In this chapter I have expanded upon these possibilities, considering the addition of the communist hypothesis and its inherent utopianism. This demand appears entirely confluent with the practice of concrete universality that I identified as potentially the most effective strategic approach in terms of mobilising the ideological ‘presence of absence’ against global capitalism. I have not yet considered, however, how the communist hypothesis relates to this position. Certainly, Žižek’s instantiation of the hypothesis, based upon the contradictions of capitalism and in particular the exclusion of surplus labour, suggests a strong similarity with the strategic intent identified. What does not fit, at least with the Jamesonian approach to utopia, is the specific naming of communism.

Jameson is clear in stating that the place of utopia occurs at the limits of our imagination. To try to imagine utopia itself – even in its own impossibility, say by labelling it the communist hypothesis – is to extend the limits of our imagination and circumvent the utopian urge by presenting an imaginary horizon for jouissance. In this case, under Jameson’s conception, a utopian position could not become a new horizon for the Left but, rather, an urge which initiates a number of possibilities. In this regard, Jameson suggests that

this clearly does not mean that even if we succeed in reviving utopia itself, the outlines of a new and effective practical politics for the era of globalisation will at once become visible but only that we will never come to one without it. (Jameson, 2004, p. 36: 36)

If this is the question that Jameson poses – and he considers this dilemma throughout his work – we need to consider Žižek’s response to the epistemological dilemmas of negative ontology. In doing so, we perhaps need to go beyond Žižek’s work so as to suggest that his Hegelian reading of universality enables more to be said about the impossible Real than he allows himself to do. That is, if Jameson suggests that the limits to our imagination cannot be signified but only experienced as a momentary effect, I have suggested throughout this thesis that the impossible can be represented because what is unrepresentable in one discursive universe is not in another. Indeed, this point is at the heart of the argumentation around political strategy. To reiterate, an element which remains unsymbolisable within a discourse, and can thus be considered a embodiment of the Real, does not necessary produce the same anxiety in an alternative discourse and thus is not unsymbolisable in itself. This process has been understood through Žižek’s conception of universality, whereby the function of an imaginary horizon is only cohered at the expense of an exceptional exclusion. This exclusion cannot be symbolised within that imaginary discourse and as such a strong tension threatens to dislocate this horizon. Viewed awry, however, this exceptional point – what has been labelled the concrete universal – comes into view. Such an identification offers the possibility of mobilising the tension between the abstract and concrete mode of universality, such that the hegemonic imaginary understanding becomes dislocated and new forms of political practice become possible.

As an illustration, the concrete universal might be experienced as a point of incommensurability within dominant readings of global capital but can be a strong element of a Marxist discourse. In this case, whilst a utopian demand inherent in surplus labour might be experienced as impossible within capital, an alternative understanding of capital – such as that constructed in this discourse – is able to identify this point as the universal exception holding together capital.

Thus, Žižek is able to identify this utopian impossibility because it is not an abstract or ideal formulation but, rather, a reaction to existing conditions. That is, he is only able to take this position because the antagonism is not a particular one that can be integrated within capitalism but, rather, speaks to the universality of the system. In regards to Jameson’s concerns around the possible subversion of utopian energy caused by the naming of this point, the communist hypothesis does not suggest a ‘filling’ out of the utopian space but, rather, signifies that point which cannot be filled out. In this sense, through the impossibility of including the concrete universal, the communist hypothesis does open up a new horizon for the Left but not one that will please many of Žižek’s critics – it does not produce a new point of imaginary identification but, instead, opens up new space for these identifications to be formed. What is vital, however, is the reference to communism itself as that which is incommensurable with capitalism, in terms of a demand that accompanies it for the integration of surplus labour. It is to the normative intent inherent in this position that I now turn.

The Politics of the Communist Hypothesis

Whilst in this chapter I have presented the communist hypothesis as being based upon the existing contradictions of capitalism, and in particular the contradiction posed by surplus labour, a normative intent has awaited interpretation. If my articulation of the communist hypothesis thus far has been an extension of the strategic intention displayed in the previous chapter – the utopia of the impossibility of capitalism – I have yet to consider the consequences of naming this hypothesis beyond the (just discussed) question of representation and strategy.

In this sense, it is now time to return to the deliberatively elided elements of my previous reading of the communist hypothesis. Here, in a manner which links together with Badiou’s sense of this hypothesis and that begins to display a normative aspect to Žižek’s work, I turn to the link between universality and politics, a link Žižek reports to be the dream of the young Marx: “to bring together the universality of philosophy with the universality of the proletariat” (2009b: 54-55).

For Žižek, universality and democracy are intimately intertwined, albeit with a characteristic twist. The category of the excluded stands for universality precisely because of those who are the ‘part with no part’, the element whose exclusion constitutes the order. That is, the capitalist empire – both as an ideological system and symbolic/Real logic – must produce an exclusion in order to constitute itself as a set. That exclusion of the unruly masses with no official place in the private capitalist order is what makes the totality of capital universal. The universal is not the failed attempt of any given set to constitute itself but, rather, the set and its failure constitute the domain of universality. Žižek links this form of universality to what he deems to be a Grecian sense of democracy to signify the intrusion of the excluded into the socio-political space. Here, Žižek subverts the dualism between ‘true’ democracy and the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ by contrasting ancient Greek democracy with Western-style liberal democracy.

Liberal democracy seeks to include but only those who are already symbolised within the current order. That is, liberal democracy is already formed on the basis of the exclusion of class struggle, the main instantiation of which is the masses of urban slums that act as the reserve army of labour for capitalism. Moreover, democracy is not contingent in itself but, rather, requires the dictatorship of the democratic institution. By contrast, the Grecian form of democracy is based upon the inclusion the group(s) excluded from society – the part with no part in the established order or the demos – into the polis. Such a move cannot be established by the demos themselves but, rather, must come from an internal rupture of ideological coherence within that order. Thus ‘communist’ democracy is universal in the sense that it includes that which is outside of itself, yet necessary for its own constitution (Žižek, 2008a: 412-415). Nonetheless, this form of democracy is not a permanent state. Rather, it is more like the transitionary dialectic of Lacanian ethics, whereby the established order is disabled for a moment and wherein history lies open.

The obvious question here is the content of this future: Does Žižek’s work suggest any preferred form of the future? More particularly, given the reference to Marxism that has run throughout this thesis and Žižek’s work, does the commitment to communist hypothesis restore any sense of prescriptive Marxism? Žižek is certainly unwilling to enter into debate over institutional forms of politics. Nonetheless, a prescriptive element does exist, both in the sense of identifying a correct political response to capitalism and an assumption as to the kind of outcome that would make this response the right one. Moreover, this approach is a specifically Marxist form of politics – here prescription relates not to the shape of what will follow but of how we are to get there.

By utilising class struggle, materialism, the plight of the proletariat, and the communist hypothesis, this thesis has documented a form of Marxist politics today, one that takes explanation and ontology as a form of politics in itself. That is, in this thesis, having rejected both essentialist and discursive variants of Marxism, I have come to argue that psychoanalysis can inform the practice of Marxist politics in the 21^st century through a theory of enjoyment and ideology that continues to emphasize the causal role of class struggle and the economy. This form of politics is not without normative commitment but the primary focus is not upon transposing this position into an alternative form of society. Instead it considers how space for potential new societies might be kept open. Such an approach stems not from a transcendental vision of politics but, rather, the structure of the political in the 21^st century.

As such, Žižek’s work is not an empty treatise on political strategy but, instead, is dedicated to moving beyond capitalism. From this, we can only assume that Žižek takes there to be something fundamentally abhorrent about capital. Yet, his reference to democracy does not signal his preferred form of the future. Rather, the previous reference to democracy as a form of intrusion of the part-with-no-part signals the content of this statement: democracy is a momentary experience. Tellingly, Žižek states:

The problem is thus: how to regulate/institutionalize the very violent egalitarian democratic impulse, how to prevent it from being drowned in democracy in the second sense of the term (regulated procedure)? If there is no way to do it, the “authentic” democracy remains a momentary utopian outburst which, the proverbial morning after, has to be normalized. (ibid.: 417, emphasis added)

The communist hypothesis does, however, signal an underlying commitment in both Žižek’s work and this thesis in particular. This commitment forms the basis of the ‘communist’ hypothesis rather than any reference to democracy as the driver of the future. Žižek justifies the use of communism as the named signifier of the transition from capitalism to the future by reference to the surplus labour within capitalism itself. This identifies not only a belief that those extimately excluded within capitalism who do not enjoy the benefits of this system but, also, that this is a problem in itself. That is, by utilising communism and surplus labour as the primary reference point to the end of capitalism, Žižek is signaling more than just a strategic intent to move beyond capitalism. He is implicitly suggesting an ethical commitment to egalitarian justice to which there is no requirement for further justification[5]. Inherent in this is a minimal demand, most beautifully articulated by Adorno in his Mimma Moralia (1974: 155): “There is tenderness only in the coarsest demand; that no one should go hungry any more”.

[1] This affinity is often signalled through references to Lenin and Stalin.

[2] We can also witness the development of this idea in the concluding chapters of In Defence of Lost Causes (2008).

[3]See Žižek’s previous debate with Geoff Boucher (Boucher, 2004; Žižek, 2004a).

[4] While we can reasonably conceive of these worlds – that of Western capitalism and the globally disposed – throughout this thesis I have insisted that these worlds are both parallel and interconnected such that the existence of one allows for the presence of the other. Moreover, increasingly we are witnessing the uneasily mixing of these worlds as economic restructuring has brought Third World living conditions into the West and concentrated areas of wealth to the developing world.

[5] Indeed, in the final page of In Defence of Lost Causes (2008a: 461), Žižek trumpets the idea of ‘strict egalitarian justice’ as one of the four elements that would prevent ecological catastrophe.

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Tagged Badiou, communist hypothesis, Jameson, Marx, Utopia, Zizek

Conclusion

Posted on May 28, 2010 | Leave a comment

Adorno’s demand for the end of hunger defines the ultimate purpose of this text. My final position, however, as laid out in the previous chapter, has established some distance from this initial concern. The argumentation has moved from the limitations of confronting hunger within capitalism, to the plight of Marxism, before turning to the application of psychoanalysis to politics, and finally, to producing a Žižekian response to the problematic. This response is not straightforward in the sense of establishing a direct argument between the final premise and the initial concern: it is not a matter of re-establishing trade justice or even considering a new form of economy but, rather, a theoretical consideration. For this reason, along with summarising the journey I have taken through this thesis, the final task to be undertaken in this conclusion is to consider the consequences of responding to global capitalism – and subsequently the plight of the global poor – in the Žižekian manner constructed in this thesis.

Perhaps the most salient task of my argument has been to signal the value of Žižek’s work today. His theory is often the subject of stern critique – as has been documented throughout – on the basis that whilst it makes for intriguing theory it does not suggest a feasible form of politics. Thus far I have attempted to reveal the potential for a Žižekian response, the origins of which cannot be established a priori but, rather, is a reaction to our historical conditioning within global capitalism.

It is these historical conditions that formed the basis of this thesis. The problem to which I have responded is the identification of a moral unease with the simultaneous gross underdevelopment of populations of the world, combined with a practical anxiety that the scale of economic activity on the planet is degrading the environment to a point that not only threatens the status of human life on Earth but also places a very real limitation on the possibility of reducing global material deprivation. Moreover, through a critique of liberal capitalism, exemplified by the work of economist Jeffery Sachs, I suggested that these problems – those of environmental degradation and global poverty – could not be meaningfully resolved within capitalism but were indeed caused, or at least maintained, by global capitalism. As such, concern at the plight of the world’s poor has been transferred to a rejection of capitalism – if the initial, abstract, concern has been with the poor themselves, my analysis has suggested that these subjugated populations can be considered as surplus labour, a concrete element of global capitalism – the status of the hungry today cannot be considered outside of capital, such that a response to hunger must also be a response to capitalism.

I have insisted that capital is a system that requires a continual revolutionising of its own conditions to produce future growth. Although increases in efficiency resulting from improved technology, or a willingness to tackle the effects of consumption upon the environment are of benefit, they are an inadequate response to the continued growth of the world economy. Indeed, as this growth is compounded by the large predicted increases in the global population, it is clear that the size of planetary economic activity is going to rise well above the carrying capacity of the planet. What is required, it appears, is a wide-scale reduction in consumption, particularly from those consuming the most. As noted, calls for a reduction in consumption in the ‘post-industrial’ economy are a strong element of the mainstream Green movement. What this position elides, however, is that such reductions in consumption will necessarily result in a fall in employment for those most in need: the Third or developing world (under capitalism at least). For this reason, I have argued that a widespread lifting of material standards of living for the poorest citizens of the planet was not environmentally possible – within the current form of the economy.

If this concern is of a practical, historical nature – a limit only being reached now – a second factor preventing the emancipation of the world’s poor within capital has an ahistorical structure. For the capitalist wage-labour system to operate – the system in which the owners of capital employ the labour power of those without the means of production – an excess of workers must exist in order to coerce workers to sell their bodies to this labour. As has been seen in previous historical examples – the colonisation of Australia, for example, in which the ready availability of land produced difficulties in the establishment of a labour force during the early years of settlement (Marx, 2007: 839-840; Pappe, 1951: 90) – without the compulsion to work for the profit of others, the wage-labour system does not function efficiently. What provides this compulsion is an excess of supply of workers such that a worker who refuses to accept work at market prices is easily replaced by another.

To some degree, this operation is subverted by the existence of minimum-wage and welfare laws in Western nations, so that not only do wage prices not drop to the market price determined by supply but the unemployed are afforded some protection. The displacement of large elements of production – whether in manufacturing ‘sweatshops’ or cash-crop farms – to the developing world, often attracted by the absence of these conditions and the massive surplus of labour, produces a different result. Not only do wage prices often fall to subsistence levels but those in the position of excess to the labour force suffer extreme material deprivation. The necessary consequence of the capitalist wage-system which produces Western wealth and an increasing culture of consumption is the death of those ‘extimately’ placed within the system.

This tragedy is not a contingent aberration – it is not a matter of extending Western protections (many of which were demanded in The Communist Manifesto) to the developing world – but is rather caused by a structural oversupply of workers caused in large part by the massive development of urban slums in the developing world over the past half century. Moreover, it is also caused by the structural requirement within capital for only a minority to own the means of production. I have suggested that surplus labour is extimately located within global capitalism in the sense that it is necessarily for the functioning of capitalism but not ideologically included with capital. That is, for the apologists of capital and the official ‘measurers’ of the system – whether the United Nations, IMF or the World Bank – the global poor are outside of capitalism. My analysis has suggested, however, that this exclusion is vital for the functioning of capital.

As a result of both this structural limitations and the former practical restriction, global capitalism is not able to establish an egalitarian justice that applies equally to all humanity. It is able to produce unprecedented levels of wealth for a minority of the population, a level of wealth that corresponds to previously impossible life-expectancies and a potential for freedom from material want and need. That said, it is constitutively unable to extend these privileges across the globe. Capitalism may not actively create (absolute) poverty in the majority of cases but it does maintain it. For this reason, assuming this status to be inherently unacceptable, the problem of establishing these conditions (of egalitarian justice) forms the basis of this thesis: how to produce a form of economy in which a reasonable degree of equality and opportunity is available for all populations across the planet, in a modality which is fundamentally sustainable for the environment of our planet.

The Theoretical Problematic

In responding to this problematic, I have had cause to move away from any of the practicalities which come from a consideration of the mode of production. This thesis argues that, today, what is required is a return to politics and theory, a return to history and a fundamental questioning of the horizon of global capitalism. This call does not arise abstractly but, rather, from the situation in which we find ourselves. We do not require theory simply for the sake of theory[1] but, instead, because our current conceptions of the material contradictions facing humanity are inadequate. We simply have no way of responding within the current horizon.

In the turn to theory, I had cause to consider Marxism as the primary historical alternative to capitalism and a discourse with a specific appeal to the globally dispossessed. Although other models of the economy exist, both within and outside capitalism and socialist-communist modes (see Barratt Brown, 1984; Wall, 2005), none have achieved anything like the hegemony of either capitalism or Marxism. The history of the application of Marxist theory to actually existing economies, however, has not proved any less destructive to the environment and in many cases to the poorest citizens. Indeed, socialist and communist economies have often been even more environmentally destructive, although this is not necessarily so – unlike capitalism and ‘the market’ there is no structural requirement within most forms of socialist or communist economics for continual expansion. Moreover, the excesses of totalitarian politics have meant that, as a reference point, Marxism has not provided any more hope for the globally subjugated. Finally, the widespread collapse of actually-existing socialist states at the end of the 20^th century revealed a range of structural failings in their construction. These limitations had been previously identified in a number of philosophical movements which sought to reconsider Marxist theory in light of the continued functioning of global capitalism and the struggles of the socialist-communist state.

As such, in turning to Marxist theory, it is these philosophical difficulties that have formed the basis of my argumentation in this thesis. Considering Marxist discourse to be the potentially most effective resource for responding to the deadlock created by global capitalism, I have suggested that Marxism became associated with the rejection of grand narratives, essentialism and determinism which came with the discursive turn and postmodernity in the latter half of the 20^th century. The turn to culture and language largely occurred as an attempt to explain the failings of Marxism but came to reject the discourse altogether. These forms of discourse remained focused primarily upon the role of culture and ideology rather than materialism, class struggle, and upon the economy. If traditional forms of Marxism had placed too much emphasis upon the historical unfolding of the economy and the destiny of the proletariat, then the new forms of cultural or discursive Marxism appeared entirely impotent in response to the challenges posed by global capitalism.

Therefore, the question of how to respond to the problematic posed by surplus labour and capitalism became a question about the restoration of the political efficacy of Marxist theory. In response to this breakdown of Marxism as both a descriptive and prescriptive device, I turned to psychoanalytic theory and to the work of Žižek as a return to materialism and the economy. This turn has provided the question to which this thesis has been a reply: in what manner can Žižekian theory be used to respond to the material symptoms of global capitalism?

As such, my thesis stands not only as a reaction to global poverty, and by analytic extension, capital but also to Žižek’s work. Here, I located Žižek as working within the Marxist problematic, although his primary reference is to Lacanian psychoanalysis. Although psychoanalysis has often been combined with Marxism, Žižek’s Lacanian reading of Marxism is strongly critical of the historical materialism which has dominated traditional Marxist politics, as well as the cultural forms of ‘post-Marxism’ which have followed. In order to respond to this critique, I turned to the ethics of psychoanalysis and in particular, Lacan.

The ethics that Lacan identified as being at the core of his psychoanalytic discourse suggested, following Freud, that attempts to find a transcendental form of the Good led only to the guilt of the super-ego – a guilt that Lacan branded a form of jouissance. Regarding the Good as ultimately pathological, Lacan established his ethics as a response to the guilt provided by the super-ego. Instead, his ethics postulated a renewed relationship to the jouissance that remained possible within the symbolic order. This relationship, however, was not a permanent state but, rather, a transitory dialectic which moved the subject out of a deadlock and into new forms of jouissance.

Whilst these ethics provided an intriguing reading of the prospects of the Good and of shared social life, they proved to be incommensurate with the production of an imaginary notion of shared community which would match that suggested by Marxist communism. Through a critique of Stavrakakis and Laclau, I have suggested that the Lacanian dialectic cannot be institutionalised but, rather, that it offers an insight into the political that was best exemplified in the works of Žižek. Although I have rejected the postulation that there exists a singular form of ‘Žižekian’ politics, I advanced a reading of Žižek which suggests that his work provides a strategic form of politics based upon an alignment with the dislocating possibilities of the Real.

Moreover, I came to identify Žižek’s construction of the ontology of the economy as at the core of his political work. Here, capital and class struggle could be productively interpreted as articulations of the Real, such that – in relation to capital-as-the-Real – the strength of capital means that no alternative is currently possible: capital has hegemonised the place of hegemony. Class struggle as a modality of the Real causes every instantiation of the economy to be based around the impossibility of class struggle – that there is no class relationship. This identification, however, brought me no closer to an alternative form of political practice, despite the efforts expended in this vein by Madra and Özselcuk, as well as by Hardt and Negri.

Instead of this alternative, I have suggested that a number of strategic positions emerge from Žižek’s work, each of which would produce a potentially different analysis of capitalism and, in particular, of surplus labour. Here I considered the act and subtractive politics, as well as the practice of concrete universality. Finding the first two strategies to have a limited appeal, given the circumstances in which they are to be applied, I turned to the practice of concrete universality as the most effective strategic interpretation of Žižek’s work in relation to the problematic of global poverty.

By practicing the concrete universal and forcing a (discursive) intrusion of that concrete universal into the field of ideology that shields politics from the existence of that universal, I am suggesting that capitalism could potentially be dislocated in such a manner that a space would open for new forms of political practice. Specifically, I recognised a recent development within Žižek’s work – the identification with a communist hypothesis – as a guide to the shape of the future. This hypothesis does not suggest a particular discursive content for such a movement but, rather, holds the place of a utopian demand. This demand is not for a perfect society but, instead, for a recognition as to the current impossibility of imagining such a society. In this regard, the communist hypothesis acts as an extension of the strategic positioning constructed in Chapter Seven – an attempt to push the exclusion of surplus labour to the ideological surface of capital.

The question that has been largely foreclosed from this analysis thus far has been of the value judgements inherent in Žižek’s work and this thesis. If I began with an assumption of egalitarian justice then the remainder of the argument in this thesis has tended towards the rejection of normative positions, in particular those based upon the transcendentalism of a moral signifier. Moreover, as well as the inherent commitment to the hungry of this world, as held in Adorno’s emblematic quote which ended the penultimate chapter, I have hinted that Žižek’s location of the communist hypothesis as the form of politics today suggests a normative positioning which is yet to be addressed. It is to this point that I shall now turn.

The Consequences of Žižekian Politics Today

The horizon opened up by the communist hypothesis allows for a new identification – with the impossibility and injustice of the capitalist system – and a new direction for embodied political ambitions (but without a programmatic political statement). Not only is such an approach incompatible with the politics of utopia, it is too much to expect from Žižek’s work. Žižek is not the master but, rather, a philosopher who has been able to open up a new direction for political thought.

Nonetheless, we must carefully consider the consequences of practicing this form of politics. Our age is not without proposals for responding to the symptoms of capitalism. There are a number of administrative approaches to poverty and environmental change that will potentially reduce the suffering of human populations in a very tangible manner. Programmes such as micro-finance for women in the Third world should be celebrated for the very real benefits they bring. Nonetheless, one of the primary assertions of this argument is that these movements will never be enough to relieve the suffering of all, or even the majority. It is not that we should dismiss or discourage these moves but that we must be weary of their fantasmatic effects.

Yet, if I have posited a position that is too optimistic, inferring that change will arise through the correct application of strategic theory, then this has not been my intention. Our circumstances are dire and our paths forward will be difficult. There are some very real restrictions upon any movement for radical change. We cannot simply overthrow governments in this current state as their power – whether military, monetary or ideological – is such that this kind of move would be instantly crushed. Rather, this time is cause for a different kind of politics, a shifting of the ideological terrain by means of reconsidering the disavowed foundations upon which that power is based, such that overthrowing governments in the name of an egalitarian justice appears to be the only thing to do. It is only by confronting these unbearable foundations that a new imaginary energy will come into being, one that will push history beyond capitalism.

Thus, whilst we might admire the pragmatism of the likes of Jeffery Sachs, or the moral imperative at the heart of Peter Singer’s demands for justice, the circumstances of our time mean they are ultimately ineffective if, however, easy, solutions. If the Žižekian path outlined in this thesis appears to be a ridiculous risk – to demand a shift from a global society in which a part of that society is experiencing unparalleled wealth, life-expectancies and freedom from direct want, to an undistinguished beyond identified only by its current impossibility – then this risk can only be justified by reference to the miserable plight of those who have no stake in the order, yet remain as its foundations. For this surplus of humanity, such a demand is not a risk but, rather, their only hope.

Conversely, if I have illustrated the need to move beyond capitalism, an equally demanding alternative exists from those who are willing to assert an ideological opposition to capital. Indeed, both these positions illustrate a utopian demand. I have also been careful to illustrate, however, that these ideological demands cannot successfully rearticulate the path of the future, such is the power of capitalism. This does not mean, however, that they will not occur. Indeed, the very notion of communism in the communist hypothesis is far from innocent, carrying with it the weight of a largely ghastly ideological history. Any form of politics which seeks to engage with this signifier will face battles on both sides: an administrative dismissal of communism as a failed and dangerously utopian ideology and attempts to fill the signifier with ideological meaning in the name of jouissance.

Furthermore, the power of capital is such that it is likely to continue for some time, despite our interventions. The shape of capital and its symptoms will morph and our responses must change as well. As urban slum populations increase and economic growth continues to pressure the climate, it is likely that these symptoms, and the consequences of the capitalist mode of production, will become more apparent. Most particularly, it is likely that these symptoms will themselves become intrusions as climate change comes to the fore – increasing struggles over scare resources – and the geographical distance between ‘the haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ lessens. This shift will occur not only through the spreading of slums – or the development of slums on the edge of previous wealthy cities – but through the increasingly prevalent trend toward illegal migration into the West[2]. The strategic challenge moving forward is to avoid a reactionary hegemony, in which open power conflicts over resources and the dehumanisation of refugees and migrants becomes the norm. Rather, we must insist upon the contradiction between the consequences of capital and any remaining moral sense of ourselves. It is perhaps at this point that my wager that humans are ‘Good’ animals will be put to the test.

Nonetheless, at this time in history, in which capitalism reigns darkly supreme yet is plagued both by its own non-existence and the tormenting presence of symptoms which prove its existence, Žižek’s form of negative ontological politics is the kind of approach which provides the most hope for the kind of radical change which would drastically improve the material circumstances of the hungry by giving them a presence beyond their mere biological being.

Future Possibilities

If this thesis began with an explicit Marxism posturing, this reference has been increasing marginalised in favour of debate over the role and possibilities of psychoanalytic politics. Yet, the value of Marxism as an intellectual and political resource should not be doubted and it is in this manner that Marxism ultimately informs Žižek’s work and the argument developed in this thesis. I believe that this is the most productive articulation of Marxist politics today – not as an explicit ideological position but, rather, as part of a renewed political practice which insists upon the excluded presence of the traumatic foundations of capitalism. Whilst the content of this political practice is distinctly Marxist – referring as it does to conceptions of class struggle, of exploitation and of communism – the form of its practice is dominated by a Lacanianism which over-rides the traditional expression of these concepts. Whilst I have discussed this difficulty throughout the thesis, it is worth noting here that this is not the final word on Marxist politics. Although I have suggested here that the most productive form of politics in response to capitalism is informed more by psychoanalysis than Marxism – without dismissing the restrictions on Marxist political practice after the signifier – it is quite possible that a future beyond capitalism will bring greater reference to the Marxist tradition.

On the other hand, neither should the lessons learnt an understanding of the negative ontological structuring role of language be dismissed: these are not limitations of capital but, rather, the ahistorical conditions of possibility for shared social life. Nonetheless, politics based upon a negative ontology, such as Žižek’s, do appear to have a limited functionality, operating as a form of political intervention rather than suggesting any institutional content. These forms do speak to that institutional content but whether an ethics of negativity can become the basis for community, and indeed the material reproduction of that community, remains an open question. What I have suggested in this thesis is that these forms of politics are essentially political and, through Žižek’s reading of the politics of the political, can form the basis for radical movements. Conversely, the conditions of capital are such that there is no possibility for these alternative forms to gain the kind of traction which would allow any autonomous expression.

Rather, more than ever today we are provided with an opportunity to practice an active politics of the negative that operates through the deliberate exposure of the disavowed foundations of our order. These foundations offer the prospect of a dynamic and unsustainable disturbance in the prevailing socio-political order through the forced and embodied acknowledgement of the excluded as the foundations of our mode of being. To practice the concrete universal is thus to cross the mode of fantasy that coheres the imaginary horizons of our civilisation, leaving ideology with no defence against that which must become unpalatable – if we have any sense of ourselves as a species of ‘good animals’. This is Žižek’s ‘utopian impossibility’; the practice of concrete universality such that we (as a people) are forced to imagine a new mode of being. This is utopia.

We must remember, however, that this political intervention remains academic. Not only is this thesis confined to the discourse of the university but the kind of political intervention which I have discussed relates to the advancement of ideas, which, while a mode of political practice in themselves, are unlikely to resonate with the public as they are currently articulated. Instead, any movement which has the potential to evoke and carry through widespread change must engage with popular ideology, whether through ever evolving forms of media or on the streets. Nonetheless, whilst there are limitations to the political reach of academic work, this work can and does play a vital role in informing various modes of political practice. Whilst the application of the strategies abstracted in this thesis would no doubt be rougher and more concrete, the identification of these approaches suggests a beginning to these processes.

Thus Žižek’s answer to Thomas Brockelmann’s (1996: 205) question “What, after all does it mean to be ‘against’ capitalism if that suggests nothing about what one would change in it or substitute for it?”, or to Laclau’s almost hysterical demands for Žižek to reveal his alternative form of economy or radical imaginary (Laclau, 2000a: 206), is not the production of an alternative horizon. It is, instead, to identify the exceptional and symptomatic points upon which ideological formations rest. Moreover, Žižek does not only seek to identify such points but, as I have discussed in Chapter Seven in relation to political strategy, to consider how the Real gap between ideology and its exception can be exposed.

Thus, in terms of the shape of the future, in this thesis I have not come to any conclusion except to state that if we are to have any true sense of egalitarian justice and global sustainability a new future is required. Moreover, following Žižek I have come to suggest that that the most effective strategy to open up space to forge this future is by practicing the intrusion of the concrete universality, a utopian practice which relies upon the communist demand of surplus labour. As such, Žižek’s work is certainly not conservative, nor without a political basis.

But what form will the future hold? There can be no guarantee but politics will continue. Thus, as Buchanan (1998) notes, the practice of generating a new world is a utopian urge. There is, however, nothing utopian about the resulting society, which will be, like any other instantiation of human community, profoundly complicated. Utopia – in the sense of the fullness of being and the arrival of jouissance – will not occur. Instead, the future may well take the shape of one of the approaches critiqued in this text, a version of Laclau’s radical democracy or of the communicative cooperation of the multitude but Žižek provides no suggestion as to what that might be. This is not to suggest that we are resigned to a masculine sense of ideology and enjoyment, whereby the ontological negativity inherent to social life is disavowed in favour of the powerful positive alternative. This thesis has spoken primarily to the conditioned possibility of radical action under the reign of 21^st century capitalism. I have come to suggest that an alternative sense of jouissance is not readily available and Lacan’s dialectical ethics are not compatible with institutional forms. This does not rule out other forms coming to the fore. The consideration of these possibilities, however, are beyond the scope of this text and more pertinently, beyond our current political horizon. Instead, what is required is that at this time in the history of humanity, when the morbid deadlock caused by global capitalism is becoming increasingly apparent, is the utopian practice of Žižekian psychoanalysis. The rest shall be history.

[1] Although, as Ernesto Laclau argues, a fundamental questioning of the foundations of society is the site of political freedom. Certainly theory has a value in and of itself but that is not the specific scope of this project.

[2] It is this topic which will form the basis of my future work.

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The Body of the Discursive Turn

Posted on February 3, 2010 | 1 Comment

Although Freud developed psychoanalysis as a clinical means of curing psychological pathologies, psychoanalysis after Lacan has become another response to the discursive turn in both its clinical and sociological forms. Following Saussure, for Lacan ‘it is the world of words that creates the world of things’ (2006: 229) such that the subject did not use language but was rather constituted in language (or rather its failure) as signification comes to cruelly dominate the psyche. Lacanian theory thus suggests that the human subject is fundamentally alienated from within; language, the very stuff of our thoughts, feelings and (ego)identity comes from outside, from something Other that comes to invade, and define, our inner life (Fink, 1995: 7).

The seat of our inner life is the unconscious, which is both formed by language and structured like a language; it has a formal grammar which unfolds like a chain (Ibid: 8). The unconscious then becomes, according to Lacan, ‘the discourse of the Other’ (Lacan, 2006: 265). The unconscious acts as the presence of the Other within the body. In this sense the human subject does not use language, but is rather used by language through the unconscious discourse of the Other (Fink, 1995: 14).

Moreover, the central effect of symbolisation is not simply the separation of the concept and the thing, but rather the material separation of the body from itself, otherwise known as symbolic castration. Subjective alienation is not only caused by the intersubjective presence of language but the severance of the body from its materiality. The human, unlike its fellow animals, cannot purely react upon instinct or enjoy its body. Rather, upon entry into the symbolic order, the subject loses access to total materiality.

Lacanian psychoanalysis, therefore, offers an alternative interpretation of the discursive turn, within which it is part. Conversely, Lacanian psychoanalysis has not fallen prey to many of difficulties we assigned to postmodernity in the previous chapter. Against the differential contingency of the signifier, psychoanalysis emphasises the underlying fixity of being through a (partial) return to materiality.

Such a perspective is not popular today because of the determining connotations of essentialism. Postmodernism has rejected essentialism, fixity and emancipation as if they are all one mode of meta-narrative illusion. In some ways the postmodernists are correct; there are no positivist meta-narratives, no essential foundations – life is inherently fragmented and contingent. Where the post-modernists are wrong, however, is in dismissing the notion of a ‘human condition’ altogether, as if it implied a naturality that no longer after the turn to language. Rather, the ultimate lack of foundation the constitutes both the subject and the human community in language is the human condition; fragmentation at the hands of language which dominates meaning and human relates but is exceeded by a surplus materiality, both in terms of what Lacan calls jouissance and the material necessity of reproducing the human animal.

The key error committed in much of the thought considered to be postmodern, is that the consideration of the fragmentation which envelops language, the body, the subject (if the subject is given a presence) and human community places the very existence of these objects in doubt. Conversely, Lacanian theory suggests that whilst language produces a fragmentation to social life from which there is no possibility of recovery, an excessive, materialist, remainder of human existence persists. This materiality is not the determining stuff of historical materialism, but rather a dialectical materialism evident only in the failure of language. If Marx suggested a commonality to human existence based around the shared conditions of production, for Lacan intersubjectivity is based around the shared grasp of language and its remainder, jouissance. If for postmodernity all that was solid had melted, for psychoanalysis the signifier does not melt social life into thin air but rather into jouissance, which ensures that politics is not just a matter of signification; instead intersubjectivity is rooted in the body.

Here, the human condition is constituted by a complex dialectic between lack and excess: lack in the sense of the negativity at the heart of being, caused by the subject’s essential separation from jouissance by the signifier; excess, because of the compensation the subject receives for this sacrifice, a surplus-jouissance found in objet a, the object cause of desire. Žižek, following Lacan and Freud before him, defines this movement between lack and excess as the death drive; being is never just being, such that; ‘Human life is never “just life”: humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things’ (Žižek 2006b: 62).

As such, by conceiving of the problem of signification as one of symbolic castration – an issue as much of the body as the psyche – Lacanian theory has been able to restore dimensions of structure, materialism and fixity lost by Marxism to postmodernity and the discursive turn. In restoring these dimensions Lacanian psychoanalysis – through Žižek in particular – has been able to rehabilitate Marxism as an explanatory device beyond any deterministic sense of history. What it has not been able to restore, however, is the emancipatory demand at the heart of the Marxist approach. In terms of the loss of an emancipatory demand, which we mourned with postmodernity in the previous chapter, the prospects appear equally grim. Indeed, psychoanalytic theory – including its Freudian forbearer – can be considered perhaps more cynical about the prospects of revolution and emancipation than postmodern thought. If postmodern ethics hold some optimism about human freedom – although dismissive of the universality required for widespread political change – psychoanalysis holds no hope; the death drive is not a theory for the sunshine theorists of the human mind.

For Lacanians, the only sense of revolution is the repetitive rotation around an axis. Change is just a rotation of the wheel which only the foolish would take for a reinvention of the wheel itself. As we shall see throughout the remainder of this thesis, this is not the last word on the role of psychoanalysis in politics. It does, however, suggest a vital question: If Lacanian theory is so deeply cynical about the progressive prospects of politics, why should it be the discourse of choice when faced with the sustainability problematic suggested in the introductory chapter? This question is complicated particularly by the implication of psychoanalysis in Marxist theory. Communism, class struggle and the revolutionary subject appear quite divorced from desire, fantasy and the essential stability of the sinthome.

The answer to this question is not straight forward, but rather treads a tricky path that will emerge through the remainder of this thesis. We shall argue that Lacanian psychoanalysis, embodied by Žižek’s work, provides the most powerful strategic response to the sustainability problematic. In order to come to this conclusion, one informed from a Marxist analysis of capitalism as much as the psychoanalytic clinic, we shall traverse questions of ethics, politics, class struggle, communism and utopia.

The focus of this particular chapter is twofold: primarily we seek to detail the manner in which psychoanalysis has been a response to the discursive turn. Of particular interest is a consideration of the challenges this response presents for the practice of both Lacanian and Marxian politics. Furthermore, in this consideration we shall seek to discuss the theoretical basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis that will determine much of the basis for future argumentation. As such, we shall consider the dialectical relationship between lack and surplus, embodied in Lacan’s notions of the Real and jouissance. Such a deliberation requires further development of desire, ideological fantasy, the symptom and subjectivity, along with the emblematic objet a[i].

In response we shall argue that the value of Lacanian psychoanalysis lies in its return to the materiality of discourse, which implies a fixity to being, rather than the contingency which was the focus of postmodernity. Conversely, Žižek suggests that a re-reading of Marxism through Lacan results in a rejection of (the fantasy of) Marxian communism and the revolutionary subject. Thus, while Marxism and psychoanalysis make a powerful couplet, this fusion is particularly troubling for any sense of politics inspired by Marx. In considering the dilemmas posed by Marxist politics after the discursive turn and symbolic castration, the chapter which follow focus on the political connotations of psychoanalysis, before returning to the politics of Marxism and a reply to the contradictions of global political economy.

Symbolic Castration, or, The Materiality of Language

Like postmodernity, Lacanian psychoanalysis responds to the dilemmas of the discursive turn, in particular the ontological side of the problematic of representation; that language has no outside from which to grasp itself. For the Lacanian subject, language as its own limit means that the subject has no access to the pure animal materiality of the body nor has any ability to access its situation outside of language. This is the crucial (materialist) paradox of humanity; to be human is to be cursed with both metaphysical concerns and moral anxiety, yet have no perch from which to consider these conceptual impositions. If all that is required is a sufficiently removed perch from which to objectivity view humanity – and the likes of Sachs may think they have found this perch (and called it economics) – much of history entails a struggle to designate this privileged point of objectivity. This struggle, moreover, has mostly involved the battle to remove those who stand in its way.

The discursive turn produced a revolution in the search for a perch; the only possibility came within language itself through what modernity called reflexivity and postmodernity the last illusion[CWM1] . Late modernity came to suggest that the problem of objectivity lay within us, not from some impossibly divorced vantage point. Psychoanalysis, however, was the bearer of bad news. The only sense of objectivity in language arose from its own failure. Language, as the discourse of the Other, not only alienates the subject from itself, creating a lack of being within the subjective realm, but the objective sphere of the Other is lacking in itself.

For Lacan, lack was the precondition for any notion of the human condition; language fundamentally alienates the subject from the body. Lack is not simply nothingness, but rather has an ontological status beyond nothingness; it does not only imply negativity, but also excessive attempts to compensate for this negativity. For Lacan, lack has the same status as an empty set; emptiness implying the possibility of fullness. Lack thus has the status of something missing – the presence of absence.

Understanding Lacan’s conception of lack is made more difficult by the inadequate translation of the French signifier ‘Manqué’ as used by Lacan. Manqué strictly translates to lack in English because of the grammatical inadequacy of the English verb ‘to miss’ (Fink, 1995: 52). Missing, more than lacking, implies both the lack of something and attempts to regain what is lost. These attempts – the ‘missing’ of the object – characterises the operation of desire; a ‘lack of being’ which generates a ‘want to be’ (ibid: 103). For Ernst Bloch (1986), this dialectic exchange between lack and longing is evidence of the utopian demand at the heart of being[ii]. Lack, Bloch suggests, cannot be articulated other than by imagining its fulfilment. In psychoanalytic terms, lack is the performative presence of absence

The excessive dialectic of language – symbolic castration[MU2] and the presence of absence – is such that the human being operates as a being of desire rather than biological need. Symbolic castration – the birth of the subject through their entry into the symbolic order – creates the division in the body which allows for jouissance; the signifier is both the cause and the limit to jouissance (Levy-Stokes, 2001:101). According to Adrian Johnston, Lacan’s re-reading of Freud switched the focus of castration from anatomy to the symbolic whereby the drives are alienated by the mediatory affect of language (2005: 323). Just as Freud had suggested that the citizen must sacrifice bodily instinct – the drives – to become part of civilisation, Lacan contended that the human condition is marked by the internal imposition of the alien demands of the symbolic order. Importantly, where Freud considered to be caused by political civilisation, Lacanian conceived it as an ahistorical necessity which has led to the occurrence of politics.

Symbolic castration means that desire becomes a biological property of the human animal, not one the infant is born with, but rather one impinged on the subject by the forced entry into language. The human being, like any animal, is subject to a number of biological needs. Indeed, Eagleton (2003:4) quotes Nietzsche in this regard as stating that; ‘whenever anybody speaks crudely of a human being as a belly with two needs and a head with one, the lover of knowledge should listen carefully’.

Need, or perhaps instinct, does exist, but it is killed and over-written by the signifier (Fink, 1995: 12). We could argue, as does Terry Eagleton (Eagleton, 2003)[CWM3] that this re-writing, and all the structural inconsistencies that come with it, is the nature of the human animal. If so, the human condition is of a paradoxical nature; that of an individual body born with biological needs that are dependent upon their expression, recognition and structural support through (an)Other that does not, according to Lacan, exist yet provides the ultimate distance between the body and itself.

In this sense the Lacanian reading of language returns to a materialism previously abandoned in the discursive turn. Whilst this materialism has some similarities with the Marxist sense – most notably the stability of existence and the need to combine theory and practice – it ultimately reinvents our understanding of materialism. For Marx, discourse occurred against the background of material, productive, conditions. This can be interpreted with varying degrees of causality. For some, Marx suggested that the material mode of production came to determine the use of ideas. Certainly, in statements such as ‘Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour’(Marx & Engels, 1970: 47) Marx seems to be suggesting that this is the case.

Alternatively, however, we could construct Marx as a materialist in a non-determinist sense, arguing that materiality is a necessity for the world of ideas, but does not determine those ideas. In this way, the Marxian and Lacanian sense of materialism appears somewhat congruent. Nonetheless, they are not simply the same, most notably the Lacanian ontology suggest that language mediates access to this materiality in a way that distorts any sense of material causality.

Moreover, Marx situated his philosophy as a sense of historical materialism in which historical material conditions conditioned the type of philosophy and politics available. For Marx, according to Eagleton (1997: 11), materialist philosophy includes itself within its historical frame. This sense of materiality is not strictly divorced from psychoanalytic theory. Indeed, Žižek suggests a very similar reading of dialectical materialism. Arguing that the decline of Marxism has not just been a political one, but rather a defeat of dialectical materialism that underpins his philosophy (Žižek 2006b: 4-7), Žižek states that dialectical materialism is not so much interested in overcoming the gap between thought and being – that thought does not objectively mirror the materiality of being – but rather identifies a gap within being itself. Žižek goes on to suggest that materialism goes beyond one’s direct inclusion in reality; stating;

‘rather, it [materialism] resides in the reflexive twist by means of which I am included in the picture constituted by me…Materialism means that the reality I see is never “whole” – not because a large part of it eludes me, but because it contains a stain, a blind spot, which indicates my inclusion in it’ (ibid:17).

We shall now move to the two concepts that dominate Žižek’s conception of dialectical materialism; the Real and jouissance. In the section which follows we shall turn to the former, seeking to understand the manner in which the Real conceives of structure, materiality and the essential fixity of discourse.

The Lack of the Real

The Real can be most broadly defined as both that which resists symbolisation and the very distorting effect which prevents access to that distortion. It can be defined as the presence of lack and that which provokes attempts to fill that absence. The Real is one of three Lacanian registers – the other two being the symbolic and the imaginary – which make up the rings of the Borromean knot. Within Lacan’s lifetime, it was the other two registers which dominated psychoanalysis; the imaginary was informed by the ‘Mirror-stage’ of the early Lacan and the symbolic through Lacan’s focus on semiotics, the signifier and the unconscious. The Real only came to the fore in Lacan’s latter work, although it has been increasingly prevalent in readings of Lacan inspired by Žižek, who focuses much more of Lacan’s later work[iii].

The Real is, according to Eagleton (2009: 141) ‘an enigmatic concept, as well as…an analogous one, working at several different levels simultaneously’. It is because of this simultaneous operation – one more akin to music than science – that the Real is such a difficult term to grasp[iv]. Certainly the Real is not reality in itself, some pure unadulterated access to materiality or biology. Rather reality, along with materiality is a response to the Real. The difficulty is that the opposite is also true; the Real is a response to materiality that is a part of ‘reality’. For this reason considering a definition is a delicate affair[v].

The Real then does not persist in and of itself. Rather the effect of the Real plays out within a variety of different discursive positions; one cannot speak of the Real in the singular, but rather of modalities of the Real. Therefore we can refer to the Real in terms of desire or drive, in the operation of fantasy and objet a or in the antagonistic points of exclusion which sustain a discourse. Indeed, as we shall discuss in Chapter Five, Žižek suggests that the operation of global capitalism can be considered a modality of the (symbolic) Real.

Žižek introduces the notion of a symbolic Real in the foreword to the 2^nd edition of For they Know Not What They Do (2002: xi-xii). This distinction came as a response to Žižek’s own criticism of his first book, The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), against which he claims he endorsed a ‘quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan’ and the Real. That is, Žižek argues that his reading of Lacan implicitly constructed the Real as a point of failure with the consequence that what is ethical is to except failure. Instead, Žižek wants to construct the Real not only as symbolic failure, but as a positive point of excess. In order to do this, Žižek contends that the Lacanian triad of ‘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.

Similarly, Bruce Fink suggests the Real can be considered as two modalities, the Real ‘before the letter’ (R₁) and the Real ‘after the letter’ (R₂). R₁ is the signifier given to that beyond language, an illusionary time and space generated by signification itself such that R₁ appears to be without absence. It is only R₂ that cuts up R₁ through the generation of ‘reality’ in the symbolic order. These cuts occur because the symbolic realm cannot fully grasp what is beyond its limits, creating a gap between reality and the Real. In essence R₁ exists only as an absence, but this absence is given a name and thus an existence; without the operation of naming in the symbolic, R₁ would only be felt as an absence (Fink, 1995,p.24-5).

The Real before the letter is thus an original trauma, the fantasmatic point of symbolic castration that turns the pleasures of animal into the torturous being of man. It is a phenomenon best described by Eagleton (2009:143-144) when he states;

Conversely, because absence can only by felt through the failure of presence, the Real cannot simply be considered external to symbolisation either in the form of R₁or R₂. The Real is not just what is excluded from the symbolic, but rather has what Lacan termed an ‘extimate’ relationship with the symbolic order, being both within and outside the symbolic at the same time. Thus, although the Real resists symbolisation, it is not alien to the symbolic. The gap between reality and the Real is strictly internal to reality – there is no reality without the Real. This is the case for R₁ because it establishes the very limits of symbolisation, but also for R₂[vi][MU4] .

R₂operates as the factor that distorts symbolisation from within; it is the disavowed ‘X’ that warps symbolisation in a manner in which we cannot be aware at the time of ‘understanding’. Thus, the Real is not simply a time or space before/outside language (this would be R₁). It is also the cuts within the symbolic order – that which cannot be symbolised from within a certain ideological constellation. What may be Real to me may not be to you; what is unsymbolisable within one matrix is not within another. Debate over the possible absence of a transcendental God may be have a Real affect on a pious church-goer – such that they feel anxious and destabilised by even such a thought – yet be a mundane signifier for an atheist. Moreover, the presentation of a signifier may give it a Real presence. Poverty statistics, as an illustration, have such a ubiquitous status that they are no longer disturbing to many but coming face-to-face with hunger and suffering much more so.

Through this understanding of the Real, we are now in the position to assert a Lacanian response to the dualism between essentialism and post-modern fragmentation. Lacanian psychoanalysis rejects the former because of the failure of language to fully grasp and positivise that which it represents prevents the construction of any such universal essentialist positions. Any such attempts can only exist by way of exclusion – a point we shall build upon in the following section. The rejection of all encompassing universality does not lead, however, to fragmentation and particularly characteristic of postmodernity. Rather, although the universal is impossible, it is also necessary.

As such, Žižek asserts that plurality – and he includes false essentialisms in this category – is always a response to some excluded Real element which is simultaneously deeper and on the surface. Thus, rather than choosing between universality and particularity, Žižek contends that both are historical responses to the impossible Real. This does not mean the Real is ahistorical, but rather takes a historical form in its instantiation within the discursive realm. Therefore structure is not a matter of a positivist notion of determinism.

Post-structuralism rejected much Marxist thought because it relied too strongly upon a deterministic notion of causality – that the economic base caused changes in the cultural superstructure. However, not only did post-structuralist thought reject Marxist determinism, however, it came to reject any notion of structure altogether in favour of a differentially contingent ontology. Žižek, however, contends that psychoanalysis is able to subvert this opposition between contingency and structure. In response to a question from Judith Butler (Butler, Laclau, & Žižek, 2000: 5) in regards to apparent tension between the (false) transcendentalism of the Lacanian Real and the contingency of hegemonic identification, Žižek states; “The opposition between an ahistorical bar of the Real and thoroughly contingent historicity is therefore a false one: it is the very ‘ahistorical’ bar as the internal limit of the process of symbolisation that sustains the space of historicity” (Žižek, 2000b: 214, original emphasis).

Thus, under the Lacanian conception, cause is thus strictly absent from the signifying chain and should be distinguished from the causality of structure. Here causality is the regular unravelling of the code of social practices, whereas the cause is that which intervenes in that chain (Fink, 1995: 31). A cause is thus an absent cause; absent from the chain of causality but present in its effects as it disrupts the automatic functioning of the signifying chain. By this Žižek[MU5] means that the negativity of the Real allows for an infinite range of historical responses, historicity and contingency being one of them.

In this sense psychoanalytic theory provides a distinctive step-change from both modernist and postmodernist ontology. If modernism spent much of its unsuccessful history trying to grasp, represent and tie down what Lacan called the Real[vii], postmodernism has given up on the whole pursuit, preferring to drift in the semblances of appearances which are but a response to the persistence impossibility of the Real. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, rejects both these approaches in favour of what Stavrakakis calls an ‘encircling of the Real’ which entails the infinite process of considering the effect of absence upon presence and identifying the central cause that drives the production of structure.

We cannot, however, produce a strict divide between cause and structure or causality – one cannot operate without the other. Moreover, as we noted earlier in this section the Real exists in different modalities, from an primordial trauma to the friction that exists between two contradictory discourses. This latter point has significant consequences for the practice of psychoanalytic politics and will thus be the focus of the next section.

The Real between Discourses

This vital move – that the Real can take a symbolisable form within an alternative discourse – suggests a ‘parallel’ universe interpretation of reality. Discourse exists as chains of differentially connected signifiers such that the meaning of one is established by reference to another. This chains establish a logical connection in which signifiers form combinations which make sense only by reference to the remainder of the ideological chain. A biblical discussion of morality has an entirely different structure – in content, rather than formal linguistic structure – from a similar discussion premised on postmodernity. This is not to suggest that the two sides cannot understand each other, but rather that terms cannot be simply transposed. As an illustration, within the biblical discussion, to argue that the conception of morality was illegitimate because it relied upon a transcendental deity is not possible. The words can be said, but they will not gain any traction within the discourse. Rather this assertion would form a point of antagonism within the biblical discursive chain.

In this conception, the discursive system exists via over-lapping chains that may or may not cross at certain points – points which Laclau labels ‘antagonisms’. In this sense the Real is still, as Lacan (2006: 388) stated, the ‘domain of whatever subsists outside symbolisation’ yet parts of this domain can be symbolised in an alternative discourse and remain absent in another. This circumstance occurs between Marxism and capitalist political economy. Marxism readily acknowledges that hunger and suffering are a necessary consequence of the interactions of the market. Such an acknowledgement would be a point of dislocation for capitalist political economy – it is a point that Sachs, for instance, struggles to account for – and is excluded from that discourse. Here we have a circumstance in which Marxist discourse can symbolise the operation of the Real within capitalism; a point which cannot be acknowledged within the latter[viii]. Such an instance – as shall be the focus of Chapters Five and Six – allows for the affects of the Real to be mobilised in a political manner[MU6] .

An example of this kind of parallel linguistic logic can be illustrated in the biological world. In January of 2010, American Physicist Paul Davies suggested that alien life may have co-existed since the beginning of what has become human life (Associated Press, 2010). Davies suggesting that there was no necessary relation for all life on Earth to have evolved from a single origin. Instead, an ‘alien’ form of life could have developed concurrently, but was unable to evolve past a certain point. This alien might well exist, Davies argued, amongst unexplored forms of bacteria. In this case, multiple chains of life might exist on the planet, each with their own biological logic that prevents a connection between them. Moreover, each chain would have different logical impossibilities (in Lacanian parlance their absent cause) – what is impossible within one form of life – say sexual reproduction – is part of the structure of another.

We must be careful here not to go caught up in the abstraction necessary to make this point. It is not as if discourses are self contained branches, never coming overlapping. Rather the discursive possibilities are infinite – we can only speak of ‘Biblical’ or ‘Postmodern’ discourse by way of ideological condensation. In practice there are any number of Biblical or Postmodern discourses and these discourses may well overlap. The point, however, remains. Language is not infinitely differential but rather is ideological cohered into certain patterns; patterns which allow for some conceptual chains but not others. Thus, whilst the Real as (R₁) is operational as the original trauma which produces discourse itself, within individual discourses unique patterns and impossibilities emerge which we have identified as a different modality of the Real – R₂[ix]_. Indeed, Lacan suggests a similar logic in his concept of the four discourses – that of the hysteric, master, university and the analyst – each of which identifies a different logic of intersubjectivity.

Žižek suggests something similar to the parallel universe approach to discourse analysis in his recent notion of the ‘parallax view’ – the apparent displacement of an object caused by a shift in the position of the observer. For Žižek, the philosophical twist is that;

‘The observed difference is not simply “subjective”, due to the fact that the same object which exists “out there” is seen from two different stances, or points of view. It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are inherently “mediated”, so that an epistemological shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an “ontological” shift in the object itself. Or – to put it is Lacanese – the subject’s gaze is always-already inscribed into the perceived object itself, in the guise of its “blind spot”, that which is “in the object more than itself’ (Žižek 2006b: 17)

The parallax view then produces a ‘multiplicity of symbolic perspectives’ (ibid:18) around an ‘unfathomable X’ – a pure difference which is an object in and of itself. A parallax produces what Kant called a ‘transcendental illusion’; the illusion that there exists a point of mediation between two discourses. This mediatory point exists only as the presence of absence, the Real. Vitally, however, the Real becomes an object itself – the parallax Real. This modality of the Real is the gap which occurs in the parallax shift from one perspective to another. If we take the biblical-postmodern discussions on morality, the parallax Real is the incommensurable gap between the discourses – that barrier which prevents direct communication between them.

Again, the Real here is that point both to which access is not possible and the obstacle itself which prevents this access (ibid:26). Furthermore, Žižek goes on to state that the Parallax Real brings with it a revision of the standard Lacanian notion of the Real as that which always returns to its place (Lacan, 2006: 17). Rather the parallax accounts for the multiple appearances of the Real itself – that the Real can be entirely different for neo-liberal and Marxist discourse, despite each responding to the same (Real) impossibility of class struggle.

The parallax Real is then itself a 2^nd order variation of the Real – it is not the trauma of symbolic castration, but rather the impossibilities inherent in attempts to symbolise the absence born by castration. The Real, therefore, in its 2^nd order variation is both felt through its absent presence – the primordial example being the Freudian slip whereby the limitations of a particular discursive structure are revealed only through the performative failure of that structure – and through the parallax symbolisation of exceptional elements that do not fit within the symbolic order. Every ideological formation has a blind-spot, an exception that simply cannot be included within the set, if that set is to maintain its consistency. It is to these exceptions that we now turn.

The Presence of the Real; On Exceptionality

As we have noted, the Lacanian ontology suggests that the symbolic order is faced with dual pressures; that of imaginary coherence and the dislocatory effect of the Real. Language can never be objective – it can never be a closed system, but rather requires on the presence of other signifiers – but it is also always in the process of seeking objective closure. Against the ahistorical failure of language, the only way to achieve this is by way of an exception. The notion of exception – a Žižekian reading of Hegel, rather than strictly Lacanian concept – often causes confusion within psychoanalytic discourse.

Much of this confusion comes from the conflation of different modes of exceptionality into one. This assumption stems from Lacan’s theory of sexuation; the manner in which men and women are structured differently in relation to castration and the lack of jouissance. Sexual differentiation has nothing to do with biological essence (Žižek, 1994: 155), but is rather a structural position in regards to the cut of the signifier; it is entirely plausible to have subjects with female genitalia identifying with the masculine position[x]. From this distinction between the masculine and the feminine, Lacan argued that ‘there is no sexual relationship; not that sexual intercourse does not occur, but rather there is no logical relationship between the masculine and feminine positions. Not only do they represent different structural responses to castration, but these responses themselves are not together compatible. As a consequence of the failure of the sexual relationship, Lacan identified sexual difference as the antagonism against which both sexuality and sociality is riven; sexual difference is the primary modality of the Real as all forms of discourse are a response to the wound of sexual difference.

Sexual difference can be conceived of as a logical problem to do with the paradoxical status of objectivity in language. The Other is lacking because it cannot complete itself; it cannot name itself within its own set. Thus, for there to be an inside there must be an exterior which designates the presence of the inside, otherwise what is internal ceases to be exclusive. In naming the inside, that name then becomes part of the set, and another exterior signifier is required to constitute the set. Thus, the complete Other, the complete set of signifiers cannot exist; there must be at least one exceptional signifier that names the set, thus exceeding the horizon of that set.

Fink (1995: 29-30) here refers to Bertrand Russell’s example of the paradox of the catalogues of all catalogues which do not include themselves as entries. If the catalogue does not include itself within the catalogue, then the list is incomplete – it has an exception, itself. If, however, the catalogue does include itself, then it should not be included within that category . Such a paradox is the key to Lacan’s understanding of the masculine and feminine; from there to exist a masculine set (a set in which all are included), an exception to that set must exist in order to define the presence of a set. By contrast, the feminine set includes its own exception, but loses the ability to define itself as a set; it becomes an infinite series.

These positions are not just logical possibilities but rather responses to castration; they suggest both a different relation to the phallus[xi] and to jouissance. The question of the exception in relation to sexuation comes by reference to the phallus. For Lacan[MU7] , the masculine is altogether subject to symbolic castration and the phallus; man is subject to jouissance of the phallus, otherwise known as symbolic jouissance (we shall turn to the question of jouissance shortly). Man can only be wholly submitted to symbolic castration, however, by the presence of an exception that is not submitted to these conditions. According to Lacan, that exception was the status of Freud’s primordial father in Totem and Taboo; the father that has not been subject to castration and is able to control and enjoy women fully (Freud, 1960). This father is considered extimate – excluded from within – he has a name but cannot be included within the set (Fink, 1995: 112).

Nonetheless, the naming of set which must necessarily exceed the set is only one of the forms of exceptionality, the other being the universal exception, otherwise known as the excluded or the concrete universal. This form of exceptionality is the form predominately used by Žižek. It is this exclusion that is the key to Žižek’s theory of universality, by which he uses[MU8] Hegel to read Lacan.. This conception of universality and the exception is vital to the remainder of the thesis, so we shall pause to consider it in detail.

Žižek, Hegel and Universality

In the Ticklish Subject (Žižek, 1999: 100 -101) Žižek suggests – and rejects – three separate positions on universality. The first, is the standard, neutral and positivised universal, indifferent to its particular content; what is universal is the same in all possible circumstances. This conception of universality relies upon a singular and essential foundation. As such, this pre-modern or early modern essentialist conception of universality has largely been the subject of critique from the discursive turn – the first question asked of this brand of universality is, from which perspective is this universal? As the very possibility of asking this question reveals the particularity of the universal. Nonetheless, it is the image of universality assumed by the likes of Jeffery Sachs and those involved in the natural sciences (or economics).

This conception of universality has been partially negated by the second alternative; universality as an illusion generated by power relations. Here the universal is neither true nor neutral, but rather a particular reflection of the existing hegemony. Typically, this version is marked by a Marxist conception of ideology, whereby the universal is a partiality, hiding the true, universal totality of social relations. Thus, this form of universality is not postmodern; theorists of a postmodern bent tend to assert that the only possible form of universality is an illusion. By contrast, this ‘Marxist’ form of universality introduces a split into universality, between an illusionary universal and a true underlying universal.

Finally, Žižek offers the universal as empty, contingent yet always already hegemonised by particular content. This is the version proposed by Ernesto Laclau. Laclau, in contrast to the previous two positions, acknowledges that the universal is impossible – language prevents a direct or neutral correlation between the universal and particular. Nonetheless, it is in this failure that universality exists. Here, universality occurs when a signifier is abstracted to the point where it represents nothing but itself – an empty signifier. The universal itself is empty, but is always filled by particular elements in a battle of hegemony. These particular elements establish a ‘chain of equivalence’ which fills out the abstract universal horizon such that it coheres our understanding of shared social life. As an illustration, if we were to consider the concept of freedom, Laclau would argue that there is no essential definition of freedom. Such a definition would enter into the first notion of universality, where there is one objective understanding of freedom. By contrast, as an example of the second option, Marx argued that ideology under the capitalist mode of production produced a conception of freedom – the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market – that masked its immanent contradiction – that selling one’s labour on the market takes away one’s freedom. Nonetheless, Marx still maintained a universal concept of freedom in species being.

By contrast, Laclau comes to argue that there is no such thing as freedom in itself, but rather freedom operates as an empty signifier such that any number of possibilities of freedom are possible, whether it is the freedom to vote, the freedom of an honourable death or Laclau’s freedom of dislocation in language. Thus freedom can become universal if it stands in for the empty place of universality. This universal, however universal in form (for Laclau, if not Žižek) can never be neutral in content – this being the major difference which separates this perspective from the previous example. Instead, the universal remains impossible and partial – universality is always the struggle for universality itself. Such an image of universality must be abstracted from a range of particular signifiers through the struggle for hegemony.

Thus this ‘abstract universal’ provides the hegemonic imaginary horizons – the signifiers and images the support any concept of shared social life – that people use to guides their actions, e.g. the concept of individual freedom or that of human rights. This universal imaginary stands in for the lack that constitutes the social domain. The abstract universal is normally based around an empty signifier, or an objet a, which in Lacanian terms provides a suture for that primal lack and, because of the sense of fullness that it gives, provides the subject with jouissance.

Returning to our example, liberal democratic discourses may be structured around the empty signifier ‘freedom’, which can be taken to mean any number of things. The content of these meanings is not important, unless you happen to be caught under its ideological grasp. In that case the freedom of avoiding the male gaze through a full body Burqa or being bombed into submission in the name of freedom, may be of some consequence. In terms of our theoretical argumentation, however, what is important is the ideological form that allows ‘freedom’ to stand in for the presence of absence and structure the field of liberal democracy. In turn, the abstract universal extends this horizon as an ideological formation, taking on further signifiers in what Laclau terms a ‘logic of equivalence’. The condensation of particular elements around a central imaginary horizon through a logic of equivalence offers the prospect of a return to fullness and Jouissance.

Such a process occurred during the 2008 US presidential elections. The Democratic candidate, Barack Obama attempted to mobilise support under the empty signifier ‘change’[xii] e.g ‘Change we can believe in’, ‘Barack Obama is the leader who will bring the change our country needs’. The strength of this strategy was that change meant nothing in itself, save an opposition to the establishment Republican party – it tapped into an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the status quo. Moreover, it allowed for different political formations to identify with the signifier, whilst setting up a frontier against Republican candidate John McCain’s appeals to leadership and experience; ‘Country First’.

Strategically, against the power of the Obama campaign, McCain had two options; to attempt to rearticulate the meaning of ‘change’, as Democratic primary candidate Hillary Clinton attempted to do in the latter stages of her campaign – McCain could have, for example, argued that change was required, but it was a change in approach rather than a change in policy – or oppose the signifier. McCain chose the latter approach, becoming what Laclau (1990: 17) labels a ‘constitutive outside’ to Obama in rejecting change as the universal horizon for understanding in the United States. Instead he has focused on presenting Obama’s appeal for change as a risk, in contrast to his appeals to leadership and experience, themselves empty signifiers.

Žižek, however, rejects[MU9] all three of these versions of universality, although he holds that there is some value in Laclau’s work, particularly in the assertion that the universal is an impossible object. Despite this apparently radical conclusion, Žižek argues that Laclau is not radical enough – he leaves in place the exclusion which allows for universality in the first place. For Žižek, the question of universality is not ‘which particular content hegemonises the empty universal’, but rather ‘which specific content has to be excluded so that the very empty form of universality emerges as the “battlefield” for hegemony?’ (Žižek, 2000a: 110). As such, Žižek contends that rather than a split between the universal and the particular (causing the universal to be impossible) the universal itself is split between its empty abstraction and concrete remainder, otherwise known as the universal exception.

The universal exception is the cut of the universal whereby one of these particulars does assert itself as universal by its very exclusion from the abstract universal. The universal thus encounters itself in the form of its opposite within itself. Universality proper thus becomes a struggle between the particular elements involved in a battle for hegemony and the singular element which belies this horizon (Žižek, 1991: 33-36).

As such, Žižek states;

“With regards to the opposition between abstract and concrete universality, this means that the only way towards a truly ‘concrete’ universality leads through the full assertion of abstract negativity by means of which the universal negates its own particular content: despite misleading appearances, it is the ‘mute universality’ of the particular content which is the predominant form of abstract universality. In other words, the only way for a universality to become concrete is to stop being a neutral-medium of its particular content, and to include itself among its particular subspecies” (Žižek, 1999: 92).

Žižek’s latest work on universality is reflected in The Parallax View (2006[MU10] ) in which Žižek considers dialectical materialist universality to be embodied by the aforementioned notion of a parallax view. Žižek argues that there are several different modalities of the parallax (2006: 7) reflecting the failure of the object to fully constitute itself. In terms of our argumentation the most pertinent parallax can be labelled ‘the parallax of universality’. Universality is a parallax object by way of a split between its abstract and a concrete forms (producing an abstract universal and a concrete universal). Because abstract horizons rely on the exclusion of particular elements (they being ‘the exception’ to those abstract horizons) for their stability, strong tension exists between the exception and the universal horizon. This tension is such that a parallax operates between the two modalities of the universal, they are two sides of the same coin; inextricably linked, but unable to be held in the same frame.

The concrete universal is thus not only the exception to the false abstract universality, but ‘persists in the very irreducible tension, non-coincidence, between these different levels’ (Žižek 2006b: 31) . One should not, and Wendell Kisner (2008) attributes this point to Hegel, distinguish between the abstract and concrete universal, but rather consider universality as the place of this split, not so much the exception itself, but both the exception and the plurality of responses which occur in response to it – this is universality proper, universality as struggle (Žižek 2006b: 34).

Thus, in Žižek’s reading of universality, difference does not occur between the neutral, mediating universal and its particular elements, but rather between the universal and its own exception. This difference is experienced as an absence which in the analytic process is represented as the Real. It is by bringing this absence into the symbolic order, not in a manner in which it can be pacified by understanding, but rather in direct contrast to the official horizon of understanding that a proper critique of universality can occur; by revealing the exceptions upon which the ‘false’ universality is founded (Žižek, 2000a: 102). Thus, the Hegelian triad of the universal, particular and singular (exception) is expanded in its Lacanian reading – a fourth element exists in the very gap between the universal and its particular, the Real (Žižek, 1991: 43-48; 1999: 79).

Politically, the central value of this particular identification of the exception is that the concrete universal operates as a modality of the Real. If we consider the concrete universal to be the place of a constitutive exception – an element of the set which is excluded from that set – then we see that it takes a material form and yet does not have a presence within the abstract horizon; its intrusion produces a dislocation. Thus the Real can have an existence, or at least a non-existence in Lacanian parlance, outside of the discursive construction of a certain narrative; the concrete universal threatens the horizon from which it is excluded and also constitutes the point of the distortion which prevents its own appearance.

If the effects of the Real are only felt as an absence – as the breakdown of a certain discourse and the subsequent distortion of symbolisation which prevents any access to the cause of the apparent impossibility – then, alternatively, the Real can be an already symbolised or symbolisable element that is unable to be acknowledged within the dominant perspective. Moreover, that element can be signified within the discourse, but attributed to a different cause or within a separate chain of equivalence.

This point can be illustrated by reference to our previous conception of surplus labour – that an excess of labour must exist for the wage-labour system to operate. More pertinently, this excess is not an abstract equation, but rather a question of life or death. In this sense, by contrast to the abstract conception of capitalism as the greatest producer of wealth and progress in human history, we can conceive that the necessary exception – the concrete universal – from this horizon is that a large percentage of the global population die slow and horrible deaths after slow and horrible lives, in order for this wealth and progress to order.

There are a number of points to be taken from this illustration. Firstly, the universal truth of capitalism is neither wealth nor poverty but rather the gap between these conceptions. It is this gap between the abstract and concrete universal which is the place of universality proper. In regards to the link between the concrete universal and the Real, we can see that surplus labour operates as both a material point of existence and a potential point of dislocation.

Conversely, this absolute poverty is not necessarily an element of the Real; it can be pacified in a number of ways. The representation of poverty in statistics is one of those processes – the ubiquity of these statistics is such that it is generally not a shock to most people to hear that 50% of the global population exists on less than $2 a day, even if it is a previously unknown ‘fact’. By contrast, coming across a large population living in this state can be quite shocking; hence the large physical walls that are often constructed to separate the wealthy from the poor in the developing world. Moreover, ideological walls are constructed by displacing the cause of poverty itself; most often poverty is attributed to the internal failings of the local system of governance in which the poor inhabit. This is the position taken by the likes of Sachs; poverty can be attributed to corruption or a refusal to obey the fundamental principles of free-market economics. A more charitable reading would attribute this failure to the developed world; the West is keeping the poor down by way of unfair trade or ill-conceived aid policies.

Nonetheless, we can see that surplus labour positioned as the concrete universal becomes a point of dislocation – the affect of the Real within an ideology. This effect is a bodily one, which has not been accounted for thus far in our rather abstract description of Lacanian theory, based around lack, absence and exceptionality. In this sense, our reading – with the exception of the previous expedition through universality – is not far divorced from Laclau’s Marxism and has given no hint as to the distinctive psychoanalytic reading of materialism discussed in the beginning of the chapter. For this reason, it is now time to turn to the other side of the dialectic of lack and excess that is at the basis of the Lacanian conception of the human condition; jouissance.

Jouissance

Jouissance is Žižek ’s ultimate answer to the question he poses in The Sublime Object of Ideology; ‘What creates and sustains the identity of a given ideological field beyond all possible variations of its positive content?’ (1989:87). Žižek begins to answer this question by suggesting that Hegemony and Socialist Strategy provides an answer to this question in the conception of the nodal point or empty signifier; that;

“the multitude of ‘floating signifiers’ proto-ideological elements, is structured into a unified field through the intervention of a certain ‘nodal point’ (the Lacanian point de capiton) which ‘quilts’ them, stops their sliding and fixes their meaning” (ibid, emphasis in original).

As the discussion extends, however, it becomes clear that Žižek ’s answer goes beyond discourse into the element of materiality which sustains the empty signifier. If Laclau’s schema works only at the ‘level of meaning’, than the full Lacanian analysis of ideology also requires the ‘level of enjoyment’ (ibid:121). This enjoyment dominates meaning and the symbolic field, bending discourse to its perverse will. The paradoxes of enjoyment – which we will soon explore – is perhaps the most original, intriguing and powerful insight of the Lacanian response to the discursive turn. As such, the materiality of enjoyment also has profound consequences for the practice of Marxism. We shall soon turn to these consequences, but let us first consider the level of enjoyment.

Lacan labels the affect of enjoyment jouissance. Jouissance, in all its paradoxical forms, is the central force of the human condition. It produces an excessive ‘enjoyment’ centred in the body experienced through language, through a dialectic of excess of jouissance and the lack of the Real. Along with the anchoring effect of the exception, for Lacanian psychoanalysis, jouissance is the ultimate reply to the contingency suggested by forms of postmodernism and poststructuralism.

If Lacan’s analysis of the symbolic register has much in common with post-structuralism, such that Lacan has at times been mistakenly categorised in this group, than jouissance allows Lacan’s work to go beyond the confines of the symbolic order. This transgression has occurred because Lacan did not conceive of the cut of the signifier as a discursive act alone, but rather one of symbolic castration; meaning is a bodily function. As such, Lacanian theory has little in common with the likes of Jacques Derrida; indeed the Lacan/Derrida schism is one of the most fundamental within continental philosophy.

Jouissance is a specifically Lacanian – as opposed to Freudian[xiii] – concept and one that carries all the inherent brilliance and difficulties that stem from his work. Jouissance, although sometimes translated into enjoyment, is the paradoxical state of suffering/enjoyment that lies ‘beyond the pleasure principle’ (Evans, 1996: 92). Jouissance is not simply enjoyment or pleasure, but rather it goes beyond this into a kind of troubling, excessive pleasure that includes elements of transgression and suffering; jouissance is excessive because it serves no purpose, relating more to the death drive than any sense of ‘biological instinct’, evolutionary or otherwise(Levy-Stokes, 2001b: 101). As such, jouissance, like the Real, exists both beyond language and as an intimate part of language. Jouissance is the partner to the Real in the dialectic of lack and excess.

As with the Real, Fink (1995:60) argues there are two orders of jouissance, before (J₁) and after the letter (J₂)[xiv]. J₁ is the pure unmitigated jouissance that is thought to be sacrificed with the castrating entry into language – it is the subject’s unmediated connection with their body. This original enjoyment is thought to be held by the Other, as if symbolic castration is a unique experience. Moreover, the ultimate act of ideological fantasy is that castration has never actually occurred; language produces both the impossibility of moving outside of itself but allows for the illusion that this is possible, that we can return to a time before castration. This illusion is supported by attributing lack to an obstacle ‘out-there’ that is blocking the fullness of society. The immigrant typically holds this position; their very presence is that antagonistic exception which prevents the expression of the nation. These signifiers, such as ‘Wall Street’ or ‘Jew’ become signifiers of lack. As the ‘signifier of lack’ they become the reason for the failure of J₁jouissance and a source of jouissance in and of themselves; J₂ .

Signifiers of lack or antagonisms are just one element in the operation of J₂ ,which occurs when an object comes to substitute for the loss of J₁, a compensation that occurs through fantasy in the staging of impossible acts to regain J₁; J₁ being impossible because the subject cannot return to a time before language. The (im)possibility of J₁ is itself a fantasmatic illusion, produced because the symbolic Other fails to compensate for castration. Such a failure sustains an unconscious instinct for a time without a sense that there is something missing from being. As J₁ is a creation of language, Žižek contends that there is no jouissance for the subject before J₂, surplus-jouissance; if the surplus is removed from jouissance, it is jouissance itself which is lost (Žižek, 1989: 52). For this reason Lacan suggests that lack must always be accompanied by excess; the lack of jouissance creates an excessive response. Jouissance is not therefore a primordial and absolute enjoyment of the body, broken by language, culture and civilisation before being bastardised into compensatory forms. Rather, jouissance occurs only because of the failure of our bodies through our forced choice into language and the reign of the signifier. Jouissance is nothing but this failure, sustained by an unconscious fantasy of unmediated bodily enjoyment.

Paradoxically then, jouissance, according to Johnston, is ‘enjoyable only insofar as it doesn’t get what it is ostensibly after’ (2005: 239). The effect of language is such that jouissance (J₂) is only able to be enjoyed in its own failure, a failure which keeps alive the prospect of an enjoyment beyond that experienced through the structure of language. The only thing worse that the ce n’est pas ca of surplus jouissance is the prospect of meeting jouissance in its bare naked form, and worst of all, knowing it. Such a horror turns the desire of ‘that’s not it’ into the melancholic horror of ‘that is all there is’. In this sense Oscar Wilde famous statement – there are two tragedies in life; not getting what you want and getting it – looks positively Lacanian.

Johnston (ibid; 240-241) contends that the choice of jouissance mirrors the ‘Highway man’s choice’; your money or your life[xv][V M11] . Of course, this choice is no choice at all; choose ‘life’ and lose your money, choose ‘the money’ and (one can only assume!) lose your life and your money. For Johnston, the choice of the subject of language is ‘your jouissance or your life!’ If the subject choices life, which they must, then jouissance is lost; the subject is destined to spend their existence in the trauma of this loss[xvi].

The ‘crazy/impossible’ choice is jouissance, to go for full enjoyment, which is naturally impossible after the subject’s entry into language. Taken to the end, the subject can only lose their life in search of more extreme forms of jouissance. Perhaps more sedately, by choosing jouissance and refusing the limitations of human existence, one could suggest the subject loses their life by not experiencing the possibilities for enjoyment inherent in the human condition, the possibilities of surplus-jouissance.

Surplus-jouissance (J₂) should therefore not be considered a secondary effect – all jouissance is secondary – but rather as the central focus of analysis. Nonetheless, neither should the fantasmatic form of jouissance be dismissed; the operation of jouissance can only be understood as a relationship between modalities; an excessive compensation for an original lack, one which is simultaneously an imaginary illusion and very Real. It is the task of fantasy to maintain the dialectic between the two modes of jouissance, constructing the ‘lure’ that the semblance of jouissance in the symbolic order may lead to something greater.

This analysis has thus far been limited to the masculine mode of enjoyment. As noted earlier in this Chapter, Lacan’s theory of sexuation produced a incompatible couplet; the masculine and the feminine. The masculine structure was entirely submitted to symbolic castration, such that any enjoyment – as has been noted – can only be a secondary, surplus-jouissance. The feminine, however, posits a different and somewhat mysterious alternative that has led some to suggest that in the feminine lies the prospect of a radical reshaping of the political.

If all of the masculine subject is submitted to castration – with an exception – then the feminine is not-all submitted to the effect of castration. The feminine subject is also castrated, but some part escapes, allowing for the possibility of an ‘Other’ jouissance beyond the phallus (Levy-Stokes, 2001a: 48). Conversely, because there is no exception to the feminine in itself – the feminine is ‘not-all’ – Lacan argued that ‘Women does not exist’. By this he meant not that there is no such thing as woman, but rather that women cannot be universalised. What Lacan claimed did not exist was the definite article that precedes women – in the original French it is not ‘Women’ that is under erasure, but rather the feminine definite article ‘La’ (Kay, 2003a: 82). There is no set of ‘Women’, rather the feminine is structured as an infinite series from which an element can be added or subtracted without effecting the structure of the set.

In regards to jouissance, the feminine is able to expand beyond the realm of the phallus, although it is still subject to castration and the phallus. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of the feminine. Feminine enjoyment is not an alternative structure, strictly divorced from the masculine – rather it occurs as an impossible supplement to the masculine beyond the boundaries of the signifier (Levy-Stokes, 2001b: 105). Feminine jouissance, according to Carmela Levy-Stokes (2001c: 175) ‘goes beyond that which can be signified, and it is in the texts of mysticism that best describes this jouissance. Renata Salecl (1997), for example, using the myth of the Sirens to describe Feminine Jouissance and in Seminar XX in which Lacan by thoroughly discussion feminine jouissance, he makes regular reference to the Lewis Carroll’s fable of logic of ‘ What the Tortoise said to Achilles’.

Feminine enjoyment, however, remains more of a logical possibility than a symbolic reality. As Salecl (1997:27-28) contends, Lacan speaks to it mainly to emphasise the impossibility of its conception – it remains a potentially that cannot be spoke of. Indeed, it is only because language contains terms such as ‘unnameable’ that we can speak of feminine jouissance at all (Levy-Stokes, 2001c: 179) . According to Fink (1997:120), the Otherness of the feminine jouissance speaks suggests that ‘ The Other is not just an outside relative to a particular, determinate inside; it is always and inescapably Other, “outside” any and all systems.’

For Žižek, however, what is important is not the beyond that the feminine signifies, but rather that‘beyond it there is nothing’ (1994: 151, emphasis in original). Žižek insists that this distinction is ontological, not epistemological; what we perceive as beyond is purely a fantasmatic projection of the possibility of an eternal jouissance beyond the signifier, or, as we shall see in regards to Yannis Stavrakakis’ notion of democratic enjoyment, a radical alternative to the masculine. Žižek emphasises, however, that the feminine offers not the prospect of a beyond, but in a typical Hegelian twist ‘ there is nothing beyond…the feminine is the structure of the limit as such, a limit that preceds what may or may not lie its beyond’(Žižek, 2005: 71). We shall return to this conception in Chapter Five in which he consider Stavrakakis attempt to mobilise the feminine in support of his ‘democratic theory of enjoyment’. For now, let us move on with our understanding of masculine jouissance through the embodiment of surplus jouissance, objet a.

Objet a and the contingent essentialism of desire

Objet a is the ultimate Lacanian answer to the stability of meaning and ideological formations. Objet a, which generally goes untranslated, refers to the A that represents the Other in Lacan’s algebra. In The Parallax View (Zizek, 2006), Žižek argues that objet a is; “The object of psychoanalysis… the core of the psychoanalytic experience” (p.19). Likewise, Richard Boothby considers objet a to be perhaps Lacan’s greatest original contribution to psychoanalysis and certainly the most significant element of his work.

Objet a is an impossible object, the object that cannot exist as one. For this reason objet a has a transitional status, both between the subject and the Other/Object, both object of desire and cause of desire and integrated, yet not completely found, within each of the three Lacanian registers; although often considered primarily as an imaginary object because of the coherence sought be the subject through the object, objet a also exists in symbolisation (Boothby, 2001: 241-244).

Recently, however and primarily through Žižek’s[V M12] work, objet a has been considered to be most productively thought of as an element of the Real. Objet a operates as the little remainder of the Real within the symbolic order, the unknowable ‘X’ that forever eludes the symbolic and produces a multitude of symbolic responses through which the subject seeks to give it form. As such, objet a can be considered to be the residue of symbolisation, the last remainder of unity produced with the breakdown of jouissance. In this sense it is the positive ‘waste’ of symbolisation (Zupančič, 2006: 159).

New paragraph? This would seem to be another issue, one that the following appears to speak to The subject’s relationship to jouissance is constituted by the relationship between the subject and the impossible objet a. – fantasy The paradoxical logic of objet a is such that whilst an object may appear to be the cause of desire, that object is actually a largely arbitrary – and certainly unconscious – embodiment of the hidden cause of desire ~~(Kay, 2003: 166)~~.

Objet a becomes attached, embodied, in a particular signifier. It is this attachment which overwhelms the signifier with jouissance that makes language materialist. An object, say a commodity item like a pair of shoes, may appear to be the cause of desire; ‘I have to have those shoes, they are perfect for me because…’ The illusion, however, is that this object has taken the place of objet a which is causing the desire for the object. As such, desire has no object – only a cause, objet a (Fink, 1995: 90 – 91).

There is, however, always a gap between the cause and object of desire, a gap which further prevents the satisfaction of desire; the object can be obtained, but when it is it ceases to be the object of desire. Instead desire continues on its metonymical chain. This impossibility is the central element of the role of fantasy in desire; fantasy supports the subject’s desire, maintaining an appropriate distance from the object. Such is the emptiness of desire that the subject does not really want to obtain the object, instead what is desired is desire itself, a distance which is maintained by the construction of fantasy (Fink, 1995: 90). In this sense, as Fink suggests; “Desire is an end in itself: it seeks only more desire, not fixation on a specific object” (Fink, 1997:26).

Objet a functions as both the object of desire and the object-cause because it is the remnant of the Real, R₁, that remains in the subject after the subject enters the symbolic order and an element of the Other, the lack that persists on account of the inability of language to connect with material reality[xvii]. The manner in which objet a functions is thus dependent upon the manner in which lack is constructed in fantasy. This fantasmatic construction creates the illusion of consistency in the subject. For this consistency to operate, some object must be postivised such that it can stand in for the inherent lack that would otherwise threaten consciousness (Žižek, 1997: 81). This object is then retroactively posited as the cause of desire hmmm, this part of the puzzle hasn’t been canvassed above and perhaps should be. Thus we can consider objet a to be the embodiment of surplus-jouissance, the ‘coincidence of limit and excess, of lack and surplus… the left over which embodies the fundamental, constitutive lack’(Žižek, 1989: 53; 2001: 149).

Desire and Ideological Fantasy

The answer is objet a. Through the logic of objet a certain signifiers-objects become embodied with the power of jouissance, a power which suggests the possibility of a traversal of symbolic castration and a return to the fullness of the body. This power allows certain signifiers to not only take a structural role in discourse but a determining function in the body. This function is itself structured through ideological fantasy.

Fantasy helps the subject maintain a manageable distance from the cause of desire (objet a), supporting desire but not getting burnt by the empty horror revealed by the substituted object.

This fantasmatic construction creates the illusion of consistency in the subject. For this consistency to operate, some object must be postivised such that it can stand in for the inherent lack that would otherwise threaten consciousness (Zizek, 1997: 81). This substitute can occur in either a positive or negative manner. In terms of the latter, there becomes a signifier of lack, one that either signifies the cause of this lack, the reason why negativity has entered the order. ‘Wall St’ has recently functioned as this signifier, although ‘Jew’ is the more powerful historical example.

On the other hand, a positive ‘place-filler’ can operate, an empty signifier which suggests the possibility of full enjoyment. Barack Obama has functioned as this signifier in the 2008 US Presidential campaign, largely staying away from detailed policy issues, using signifiers like ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ which enabled a multitude of (often contradictory) signifiers to identify with his campaign. In this sense Obama became the signifier which suggested a fantasised return to the true (and great) fullness of America, a fullness and certainly greatness which is a historical fantasy[xix]. It It isinteresting to note that in 2009, once it had become apparent that Obama’s Presidency was not going to restore America, an equally passionate reaction was experienced on the opposite side of the political spectrum. During ‘town-hall’ debates over Health Care reform, protestors were seen – often yelling and crying hysterically - platitudes such as ‘This is not my America!’. Furthermore, impassioned attempts have been made to position Obama as an outside, both through the ‘birther’ movement (which argues, despite all evidence, that Obama was born in Kenya; these arguments often insinuate that he is also a Muslim) and by labelling Obama a socialist, communist or Nazi[MU14] [xx].

Theise signifiers of lack or fullness – both as a function of objet a – are then retroactively posited as the cause of desire. Thus we can consider objet a to be the embodiment of surplus-jouissance, the ‘coincidence of limit and excess, of lack and surplus… the left over which embodies the fundamental, constitutive lack’(Žižek, 1989: 53).

Desire is constituted in fantasy, which for Lacan acts as a defence against castration and the lack in the Other. Because there is no sexual relationship[V M15] , no naturally occurring formation between the subject and jouissance, for Lacan fantasy is unique to the subject, although it can take a myriad of forms, each producing a different relationship to castration and jouissance. In this sense fantasy offers the prospect of reuniting the subject with jouissance through the remainder of jouissance, objet a. The fantasmatic relationship mediates between objet a, the remainder of jouissance after the letter and the idea of J₁, providing the subject with a (relatively) coherent sense of being through the possibility that these objects could fill the empty spaces in the symbolic order (Fink, 1995: 60; Žižek 2006b: 40).

Fantasy is ultimately a narrative about the deadlock of castration. Fantasy responds to castration and antagonism, explaining the lack of jouissance, teaching the subject to desire through language. Because language is inherently intersubjective, so too is fantasy and desire. Fantasy is never singular, but rather responds to the desires of others – the ultimate question of fantasy is Che Vuoi? , What does the Other want from me? (Žižek, 1989: 118). Indeed, the most powerful logic of fantasy is that the Other is responsible for my jouissance. That is, it is the Other who has stolen my jouissance –the jouissance owed to me exists in the Other (Žižek, 1997: 7-44)[V M16] . For this reason fantasy is also social – fantasy is always ideological fantasy. Nonetheless, both terms remain important. Fantasy does not simply become ideology. Rather the implications of fantasy upon ideology has led Žižek to produce a theory of ideology which breaks strongly with the traditional Leftist-Marxist version.

Ideology, like history, is often stated to be on the wane. Nonetheless, if it appears that big power battles are over, Žižek ’s notion of ideology suggests that this is the surest sign that we continue to live in an ideological world. Ideology, in this sense comes from the illusion that there is no ideology; that society exists. Jason Glynos distinguishes this ontological sense of ideology from the two approaches which dominate ideology today; Marxism and liberalism. Classical Marxism assumes that society exists; it has a positive essence which is distorted by the partial perspective of ideology. Ideology here is an illusion, dominated by power relations which Marx attributed to the essence of class relations (196[CWM17] ).

Like the Marxist approach, Glynos suggests that liberal approach to ideology focuses on epistemology. Here ideology loses its illusionary element; ideologies are perspectives which battle for power. This form of liberal ideology tends to be postmodernist[xxi], losing any notion of truth; ideologies are simply different discourses battling for power (197). In order to distinguish the Žižekian approach to ideology, it is useful to return to the example Žižek references from Levi-Strauss; Žižek’s use of ideological critique does not seek to return to a form of truth – an empirical representation of the village – nor reduce representation to a series of images, but rather unveil the exception upon which these representations are founded. Moreover, Žižek has attempted to distance ideological critique from the questions of epistemology, to ontology. Ideology is not about knowing, but rather doing[CWM18] .

The major difference between the Marxist and Lacanian-Žižekian sense of ideology is that for Marx ideology consists of a partial representation (dominated by class-power interests) of a total reality, whereas Žižek insists that ideology entails a totalising attempt to represent partial social relations. As has been insisted throughout this Chapter, reality does not exist – it is punctuated by the Real – but the human process involves various attempts to compensate for this lack. In the social, as opposed to clinical domain[CWM19] , these attempts can be included under the umbrella concept of ideological fantasy. Ideology shapes cultural relationships to jouissance – as Glyn Daly states; “The central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through simultaneously producing the ‘threat’ to that closure” (Daly, 1999a: 220).

Nonetheless, Žižek has generally not used Lacan to rebuke Marx. Rather he suggests than Marx was Lacan’s intellectual predecessor. In the same section in which he distances psychoanalysis from the Marxian conception of ideology, Žižek reminds the reader that Lacan[CWM20] stated that Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian notion of the symptom[CWM21] . Marx ‘invented’ the Lacanian symptom by;

“Detecting a certain fissure, an asymmetry, a certain pathological imbalance which belies the universalism of bourgeois ‘rights and duties’. This imbalance, far from announcing the ‘imperfect realisation’ of these universal principles – that is, an insufficiency to be abolished by further development – functions as their constitutive moment”(Žižek, 1989: 21).

As an illustration, the notion of freedom, one very dear the heart of the liberal-democratic-capitalist operation, operates as a universal principle. However, there is a specific freedom which subverts all other notions of freedom, yet remains internal to freedom itself. That freedom is the freedom to sell one’s labour on the market, a freedom that allows for all other freedoms (through the production of surplus which allows for under freedoms within capitalism) yet subverts the very notion of freedom; once the worker sells their labour to capital, they are enslaved to the market (1989: 22).

Further to this, the same symptomatic element exists in relation to the production of surplus value. Žižek argues that once labour becomes a commodity – that is, for sale on the market – ‘equivalent exchange becomes its own negation’ (p.22). Although the worker is fully paid for their labour (according to the market), the very form of surplus-value is one of exploitation. The worker is exploited not because they are underpaid, but because of the position in which the worker exists; having to sell their labour as a commodity. For Žižek, Marx’s utopian illusion was the possibility of universality – full and equivalent exchange – could occur without a symptom (p.23). Žižek argues that Marx’s mistake was to “assume that the object of desire (the unconstrained expansion of productivity) would remain even when it was deprived of the cause that propels it (surplus value)” (2000:21). Žižek’s identification of this mistake signals the major Lacanian critique of Marxian politics.

What can surplus-jouissance teach us about surplus value?

Lacan identified a homologous logic between the logic of jouissance – that there is no jouissance without the obstacle that propels it – and the logic of surplus-value. This was missed by Marx in his work on surplus-value and productivity. Marx believed that by removing the obstacle – private appropriation of surplus-value – the productivity generated by surplus-value would remain and could be utilised for the good of all. Marx’s notion of communism relied upon the development of productivity and surplus so that the worker could be freed from the alienation of specialisation to pursue their own sense of species being. Today, it is only the wealthiest who are able to enjoy ethical benefits of Marxian communism.

Ultimately, for Marx, the production of surplus-value is the key to capitalist productivity and the expansion of capital through circulation, which ‘realises’ surplus-value, turning it into profit; it is surplus-value, based upon the historical over-supply of workers, which is the goal (object) of capital. Essentially, although the worker is fully compensated from their labour-power, the nature of labour as a commodity is that its use value produces greater value than its own; a constitutive surplus which is appropriated by the owner of the means of production (Žižek 2006b: 57).

Žižek takes the fundamental logic of surplus-value; an element of lack that generates more than itself, and extends it to the operation of capitalism as a totality. In this definition, capitalism is characterised by a dialectical circulation of lack and excess, which corresponds to the relationship within the psyche of the Real and jouissance. Žižek’s point is that under capitalism there is a commodity that, through exchange, produces more than itself; the natural operation of labour is surplus. The appropriation of this surplus by the owner is expanded through the circulation of commodities which turn money into capital; capital is embedded with a quality which makes it capable of producing a surplus, a surplus we can now label profit.

Because surplus-value acts as the core driver of capitalism, Žižek contends that the production of surplus has the same structural role in capitalism as objet a has in the psyche. Indeed, surplus-value is the objet a of capitalism. However, by labelling surplus-value as objet a, Žižek suggests that there is more to surplus-value (profit) than a simple goal. Rather, profit embodies the logic of objet a, in that it simultaneously operates as the condition of possibility and impossibility of the capitalist logic. Žižek signals this when he describes surplus-value as an inner contradiction within capitalism, but one that operates as the condition of possibility of the system.

However, it is not only Marx who believed that capitalism needs to rid itself of these symptoms. The whole capitalist edifice is driven to avoid its own inner contradictions, but in doing so only produces more. Capitalism cannot be stable; rather it has to operate in a state of constant revolution of its own conditions in order to function, generally either by producing new commodities or selling existing commodities in new markets (Jameson, 1996). Hence, the World Bank acknowledgement of the world’s poor as the ‘customers of the future’ (Moore, 2002). Capitalism is in essence a system in crisis, but a constitutive crisis which produces the upwards spiral of productivity which is the basis of capital (Žižek, 1989: 52).

Ultimately, Coca-Cola and Marxism have more in common that one might initially think, both attempting to produce utopia by attempting to retain the object without the obstacle that propels the cause. The consumer is always searching for the perfect commodity, pure jouissance, as opposed to surplus- jouissance, which would finally put an end to desire. This is, of course, not what the subject really wants, but rather the fantasmatic construction of desire which leaves the consumer searching for the ultimate ‘IT’. The constant desire for more is a continual theme in the marketing of commodity, where the product is never the product by itself. It is always offered with something ‘more’ attached, whether that ‘10%’ extra or a competition offer.

Thus, capitalism, like the hysterical psyche of capitalism consumer subjectivity, is never at a state of rest, there is never just value or jouissance; capitalism is a system based on movement (circulation) and the production of excess that hides an ultimate lack. Capitalism’s inherent and disavowed strength is its ability to revolutionise its own conditions, which is to create markets out of its own failings. The threat of global warming and the capitalist response of sustainable development and the ‘Green Dollar’ is perhaps the strongest contemporary example of this logic. This has led to what Alenka Zupancic (Zupančič, 2006 :175) describes as a ‘paradoxical convergence of power and resistance’ where threats to the system are now simply opportunities for profit. It does not take long for 21^st marketers to commodify the latest counter-culture movement. Indeed, some would argue that the marketers are generating this culture.

Thus, the structural homology between surplus-value in capitalism and the surplus-jouissance of the psyche can tell us much about the operation of capitalism. In both the surplus is not an excess which is tagged onto the normal state of affairs. Rather, this surplus is the normal state, the cause which drives the excessive balance of the system. Just as in the logic of objet a (the object of surplus-jouissance) in surplus-value there is produced what appears to be a waste, an unaccounted for surplus, in the normal operation of the system (Zupančič, 2006 :162). For Zupancic, surplus-value comes about when this waste is valorised, accounted for, not as waste but as an integral part of the system; profit (170). Thus, in capitalist ideology, there is never surplus; all things are accounted for profit is simply the appropriate return for the investment of capital. Capitalist surplus excess cannot be tamed, nor integrated into a new form, i.e. Marx’s communism. Instead, the question is, as Žižek suggests;

“The theoretical task, with immense practical-political consequences, is here: how are we to think the surplus that pertains to human productivity ‘as such’ outside its appropriation/distortion by the capitalist logic of surplus value as the mobile of social reproduction? ” (Žižek, 2007: 55).

This is a question, it seems, that Marxism is no longer equipped to handle. If Marxism has been unable to respond to the contingency of the discursive turn, it fares little better with the materialism of psychoanalysis – politically at least. What can be taken from the psychoanalytic response to the discursive turn is a deeper and more productive analysis of capitalism. If the deterministic essentialism of classical Marxism had proven unfeasible at best, the turn to language and culture removed any sense of structure, history and emancipatory drive that held Marxist discourse together. Lacanian psychoanalysis has not been able to restore the latter, but through a reading of Marxism has been able restore structure, history and a rehabilitated sense of determinism and causality. This rehabilitation of Marxism has allowed for a stronger critique of capitalism, in particular an exposure of its symptomatic structure, exceptionality and relations of enjoyment. It has not been able, however, to develop a form of politics that might match communism and the revolutionary subject. If the question is of our relation to surplus, than Marxism has no answer[CWM22] .

Psychoanalysis, however, is built on the question of the subject relation to surplus-jouissance. It is to this response that we shall now turn, considering the psychoanalytic conception of ethics as a response to jouissance both moving onto the question of politics. In doing so we shall begin to consider how the Lacanian response to surplus might inform a rehabilitation of Marxism and ultimately a response to capitalism.

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[i] I am aware of the difficulty in defining and utilising Lacanian concepts in a singular manner. As such this chapter does not seek to discuss the historical and dialectical movements and controversies inherent in the Lacanian oeuvre. Lacan’s work is notoriously obscure, Lacan himself using various concepts inconsistently across the length and content of his work. The basis of this chapter (the dialectics of the human condition) could not only be the subject of a thesis, but is a life’s work in itself. Whilst acknowledging the difficulties of using these concepts without fully exploring the possible depths of discussion, such are the inherent limitations of a thesis project that does not take these concepts as its specific focus. There is certainly value in this discussion, and one should be very careful – as I seek to be in this thesis – not to reify any notion. Conversely, in the context of this particular thesis and its ultimate subject (the crisis of global political economy) such discussion is not especially pertinent. Thus, whilst it is vital to further argumentation to divide Lacanian thought into several central concepts, the construction of these concepts must be read with the preceding proviso in mind.

[ii] Utopia, as shall be the focus of discussion in Chapter Six, can be read in two different manners. The Utopian demand could refer to the ‘perfect society’, or in Laclau’s terms, that society exists. This form of utopia would certainly be rejected by Lacan, although he would suggest that this form of utopia could be translated in jouissance. It would, however, remain equally impossible. The sense in which Bloch is referring, however, is a demand for the very impossibility of utopia; utopia as the very form of the suggestion that another mode of being is possible

[iii] Indeed this chapter, orientated by Žižek’s work, begins with the Real in its examination of Lacan’s central concepts.

[iv] Indeed, whether it is possible or desirable to grasp the Real is a matter for discussion

[v] Perhaps the best way to understand the Real is through the very failure to produce a definition. What these attempts do is encircle a certain impossibility, a point of failure in the discourse. It is this point that can be considered the Real; the Real can never be fully represented, but can be felt as the failure to account for its presence. This is perhaps what the reader should seek to take out of this section.

[vi] Žižek makes a similar distinction here between lack within a symbolic system – what post-structuralists would call differences within the chain – and the hole which establishes the symbolic system itself.

[vii] The Real is a real thorn in the side of the likes of Sachs and Fukuyama, a violent reminder that history is only a response to its own ceaseless impossibility

[viii] Žižek (2006b: 18) acknowledges a similar point in relation to objet a: that what for one person may be an ordinary object can for another by the absolute object of desire

[ix] Fink (1995:16-19), following a model given by Lacan, gives an excellent example of this logic in the coding of a coin-toss game.

[x] Although, as Sarah Kay (Kay, 2003a: 87) notes the link between biological sex and sexuation is a difficult issue in Žižek’s work. It is not immediately clear why biological men tend to be subjected to the masculine position.

[xi] Lacan broke with Freud in identifying the phallus not with the penis but rather the signifier. Again, however, there is a major ambiguity in psychoanalysis around the link between the symbolic phallus and the biological penis, the pertainent question being why the biological penis comes to represent the symbolic phallus – the link appears more than ‘radically contingent’

[xii] Early in his campaign, Obama utilising ‘Hope’ as this empty universal signifier. Although Hope remained prominent throughout the campaign, it largely gave way to Change. This change was most likely inacted inorder to avoid splitting the energy of the campaign. Conversely, this example shows that such signifiers are not strictly empty, but rather carry with them a long history of associations – what Laclau calls a chain of equivalence. The switch from the aspirations of hope to the more mainstream change is not simply a contingent move between equal signifies, but signalled a change in political strategy. Nonetheless, this does not change the fact that – once in place – each ‘empty’ signifier can be articulated by any number of discourses.

[xiii] Nonetheless, although Freud did not use this term, the beginnings of its Lacanian composition can be noted in Freud’s work on the death drive and the dialectical relation between Eros and Thanatos

[xiv] Adrian Johnston makes a similar distinction between jouissance expected and jouissance obtained (2005:297).

[xv] Žižek also makes repeated references to this demand in terms of the subjects forced choice into language

[xvi] As we shall examine in more detail in regards to Ethics in the following Chapter, much of the clinical process involves coming to terms with this choice and learning to enjoy the possibilities for enjoyment which remain. The vital switch, for Žižek , is between the subject as the tragic victim of language and the comedy of actively accepting that over which we had no control; the entry into language

[xvii] Although, as Žižek notes, to define objet a as the which emerges at the point of loss is to stay within the realm of desire, as opposed to drive, which we shall expand upon latter (Žižek 2006a)

[xviii] We can also note the Alain Badiou offers a structure of social life similar to that posited by Lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly Žižek ’s Hegelian version. He does so through a mathematical ontology rather than any reference to enjoyment or materiality. Whilst enjoying the logic of Badiou’s approach, Lacan appears much more convincing because of its concrete referent in the body, rather than Badiou’s abstract logic

[xix] The greatness of America being a fantasy no matter our political position. Even if a nation was once somehow empirically the ‘Greatest’ and had now fallen from grace, any attempt to return to that position remains a fantasy.

[xx] On a side note to our ‘American’ theme, globally the most powerful signifier of lack for those outside of the global hegemony of the West is ‘America’, often preceded by ‘death to’

[xxi] Not all modernist approaches to ideology are Marxist, but they generally take a similar form; ideology as an illusion preventing knowledge of truth

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Marxism after the Signifier

Posted on February 3, 2010 | 1 Comment

Marxism has dominated Leftist political practice since its conception. Today, however, Marxism dominates predominately by virtue of its absence. Marxism has been dealt some traumatic blows, both intellectually and politically. Most explicitly noticeable has been the fall of ‘actually existing socialism’ following its symbolic death towards the end of the 21^st century. This death has been accompanied by a loss of faith in the essentialist grasp of history and/or the hope of there being a revolutionary subject. Without the presence of communism, nor the faith in history and the hope of a revolutionary subject which might restore it, Marxism appears as dead as Fukuyama’s sense of history.

Marxism now exists only as passing reference to the bad old days of history, or, for some, the good old days of certainty. This break has been both ontological and political. The postmodern turn, with its associated focus on language and particularity has been combined with the decline of communism and the increasingly resigned dispossession of the proletariat. Moreover, the events of 1968 – which simultaneously launched the start of a number of ‘new social movements’ and killed off the hopes of many a revolutionary – and of 1989, finally finished off Marxism as a political cause, even if some outposts and out of fashion theorists did not get the message. These events, combined with the ‘turn to language’ that characterised the move towards postmodernity, meant that theorists could no longer speak of class struggle, communism and the revolutionary subject without an ironic smirk.

In this chapter we shall return the losses and gains for Marxism after its invasion by the signifier. Rejecting the initial positivism of Marxism, we consider the ‘turn to language’ that has called into question the foundational fundamentals of Marxism. This discursive turn begun within Marxism itself, as a way of explaining the failure of history to bring about its own consummation and of the revolutionary subject to advance that progression. In doing so, Marxist theory moved away from the economy of historical materialism and into culture. What began as a supplement, however, has ended up colonising the entire approach, such that the signifier ‘Marx’ is no longer required in Leftist political practice.

Such a dismissal has been a major loss for global politics. The withdraw from the universal and emancipatory dimension of Marxism has created circumstances in which global capitalism has become more widely influential than any mode of politicality in history. Today it seems the only feasible alternative to the market is a withdrawal into various religious fundamentalisms, themselves a reaction to the instability of capitalism.

While a move away from essentialism in favour of a focus on culture, language, and the politics of enjoyment should generally be applauded, the losses have been more significant. In particular forms of postmodern thought have sought to distance themselves from any sense of widespread emancipation, revolution and certainly any understanding of the collective Good. Moreover, a gap has opened up between postmodernity and the economic. The Left has not been able to establish a sense of political economy – either in terms of understanding or politics – after the discursive turn.

Towards the end of the 20^th Century, however, Laclau’s re-reading of the Marxist category of hegemony offered the possibility of returning to the question of universality whilst taking discourse seriously. Yet, although Laclau’s work provided a break from the flighty dominance of postmodern thought, his post-Marxism operates through a disavowal of the primacy of the economy. For Laclau and other post-Marxists, the economy was an element of discourse and thus could not be distinguished from the political. Whilst we might agree that the economy could not be anything but discursive, it is vital to insist upon the role of the economy.

There are two substantive consequences of Laclau’s conflation of politics and the economy. Firstly he ends up largely ignoring the economy and capitalism in favour of democracy and the freedom provided by dislocations in the symbolic order. The materiality of class struggle or the suffering of bodies appears not to be on Laclau’s agenda. Secondly, Laclau reduces politics to discourse at the expense of materiality in general. Laclau’s ontology does not specify a driving source; if language is only held together by reference to itself and politics is purely discursive, than political change should be relatively commonplace. If theory has rejected essentialism in favour of contingency, then practice remains curiously subborn.

In order to return to both the economy and materiality in Marxism, we turn to psychoanalysis, particularly Žižek’s Lacanian psychoanalysis. We find that although psychoanalysis and Marxism have a difficult relationship, the Lacanian conception of language provides the possibility of restoring some of the traditional value of Marxism. Again, however, this comes at a cost as the potentially nihilistic failure of language to suture itself continues to haunt politics.

Positive Marxism[MU1]

Marx’s work is often assumed to be the quintessential example of essentialism, from his grand explanation of the transcendental destiny of history to the inalienable good represented by communism. Certainly, much of postmodernity is built upon a rejection of this image. While we might acknowledge that Marx’s understanding of the essential direction of history might fit this image, ironically his conception of communism may have more in common with the postmodernity rejection of abstract moralism. Nonetheless, the consequence of the turn to language has been a rejection of the inevitability and scale of Marx’s theory of history, resulting in a breakdown in the political efficiency of Marxist politics.

Marx’s work was a fusion of description and prescription as he sought to develop a philosophy which changed what it sought to understand (Eagleton, 1997: 3). Marxism can be considered an ‘Emancipatory Philosophy’ which seeks to develop a relationship between epistemology and politics. Marx argued that an understanding of the contours of capitalism – particularly by the proletariat, who both suffer from capitalism and are most able to act against it – would be enough to produce a revolutionary class transformation. Of course, knowledge does not bring change in the way Marxists imagined. Most pertinently, because this knowledge is not objective, its existence is not necessarily considered universal. This is not a problem specific to Marxism; today’s strongest public critics of globalisation – Chomsky, Klein and Pilger most notably – seem to have the same sense of objective emancipation. Today, what we know is not so much as important as how we know it (ibid:4).

Marx argued that allowed historical change required a revolutionary subject rather than a teleological sense of itself, he very much relied upon a deterministic theory of history based around the materiality of production. This determinism can be represented by Marx’s supposed ‘base-superstructure’ model. Through which he suggested that the mode of production came to determine political affairs. This model is based upon the following statement from Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy;

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness’ (Marx & Engels, 1980: 11-12).

Moreover, Marx conceived that the human essence could be derived from the materiality of production, production here being divorced from the strictly economic. If postmodernity – and later modernity to an extent – has rejected any sense of foundationalism, Marx argued that ‘species being’ is the material ground for the human condition (ibid: 17). Species being embodies both Marx’s deterministic view of materiality and productive but also his conflation of description and prescription. For Marx, species being – how we are – determines how we should be.

Species being, otherwise known as ‘species essence’, depending on the translation of the German Gattungsewesen, attempts to capture the social, yet materialised nature of the human condition. What is essential to species being is the recognised interdependence of human beings, a social bond required by the necessity of material production (production here is not reduced to economy). Through the specialisation of labour which characterises production under capitalism, Marx argued that the worker is alienated from this human essence. Communism would bring about the end of alienation.

There is of course much more to be said about Marx’s conception of human nature and the possibility of avoiding its alienation. It is not, however, our intention to do so in this project. Rather our task here is reveal the extent to which Marx attempted to anchor his work in the kind of foundational ground specifically rejected by postmodernity.

As well as Marx’s concept of human essence, postmodernity has sought to move away from both the grand narrative of history and the sense of morality which are presumed to prevail throughout Marxism. In terms of a grand narrative, Marx argues that history before communism (which he labels pre-history) has been the story of class struggle as the forces and relations of production come into contradiction. It is through this narrative that Marx explains what he conceives as the major epochs of history; from primitive communism or tribal production to ancient, feudal and finally the capitalist mode of production. Each revolution in production had been caused by a breakdown in the relationship between those that control production and those who produce. This process proceeds, according to Marx, by way of the ‘iron laws of history’. Nonetheless, history for Marx is not a teleological process; rather history process through the embodied actions of man. For this reason, although Marx argued that the transformation from the capitalist to communism mode of production was inevitable, he relied upon the proletariat as the revolutionary subject which would release this inevitably through self-knowledge of their position.

Certainly Marxism affirms a grand explanation of the existing, but whether he has a sense of morality beyond this is a matter for debate (c.f. Brenkett, 1983; Rosen, 2000; Wood, 2004: 18). Eagleton (1997: 43) asserts Marxism is not structured around an abstract idealism, but rather a rejection of the apparent contradictions between the ideals of modernity and the practicalities of capitalism. Marx’s rejection of capitalism is not so much in the name of the full expression of species being under communism but rather the end of the contradiction within capitalism that, according to Eagleton;‘ In accumulating the greatest wealth that history has ever witnessed the capitalist class has done so within the context of social relations which have left most of its subordinates hungry, wretched and oppressed’ (ibid: 44).

Marx did not suggest that communism represented any sense of the ‘Good’. Indeed, he rejected abstract moral explanations, refusing to critique capitalism in these terms. Marx argued that morality was just the ideology by which the ruling elite justification the existing relations of production (Wood, 2004: 127 – 142). Morality was never abstract, as moral philosophers of early modernism held it to be, but rather sprung from existing material conditions. By contrast to utopian socialists of his time, Marx did not argue that the wage-labour system was an injustice, but was rather the only form of economic justice available within capitalism. Although he might have used the term ‘exploitation’ to describe the vulnerability of labour to capital that produces surplus-value and the conditions of the worker, he did not use this term pejoratively (see ibid: 242 – 264).

Although Marx’s did not explicitly reference his critique of capitalism to an abstract moralism, there appears to be a hidden morality implicit in his work. One does implore people to ‘throw of their chains’ in the name of history alone. Not only is Marx’s work often full with depreciatory terms such as ‘Robbery’ and ‘Injustice’, but his understanding of the alienated subject of capitalism at odds with their ‘species being’ implies an understanding of the Good, even if Marx’s was unwilling to prescribe it any further in his conception of communism. Moreover, statements like ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!’ from Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program appear to be as much of a moral imperative as anything we might find in the likes of Kant. Marx certainly had a strong dislike for the contemporary order and a strong commitment to the possibilities of the future. Even if Marx himself to be outside of morality, Marxism and the forms of communism which have followed cannot be considered in the same light. If Marx’s sense of transcendentalism was limited to history, much of the Marxism which followed installed communism as the transcendental sense of the Good.

Perhaps the important question in our consideration of the relationship between Marxism and essentialism is, ‘Which Marx?’ One cannot have access to a singular Marx, but must instead construct a Marx through the discursive lens of our time[i]. As such the Marx to which we are responding here may not be Karl Marx himself, but rather the hegemonic forms of Marxism. These constructions of Marx range from the strict analytic or scientific Marxian readings of history to the Stalinist Communist regimes of the 20^th century. In this sense, whilst we would do well to note Marx’s ambiguity in regards to morality and consider the potential for an alternative tradition of anti-foundationalist communism, the construction of Marxism to which we respond in this thesis holds to a historical grand narrative and the transcendental Good of communism. We do so not to develop a straw-man which would allow for a cleaner academic argument, but rather as a consideration of the consequences of Marx’s work. It is possible that Marx himself touched on moral relativism but that has not been the predominant application of his politics. Moreover, Marxism has certainly relied upon a foundation, but only in a descriptive conception of the path of history. For Marx, however, the descriptive merged into the prescriptive such that he did not require a moral foundation; history provided it for him. In doing so, Marx believed that he had circumvented the need for a moral foundation.

The relationship between Marxism, morality and essentialism is obviously a difficult one – it could make for the foundations of a thesis in itself. Anything produced in this short section will be insufficient. Nonetheless, the vital point to be taken from this section is that Marxism and the forms of Communism that followed relied upon a determinate sense of history, one that stemmed from an essential foundation. As a corollary, the impotence of Marxism as a response to capitalism in the 21^st century came about because of the twin failure of the totalitarian regimes inspired by his work and the meta-narrative of history which suggested the inevitable transition between capitalism and communism. Marxism lost its efficiency as an intellectual and political current because the explanations and politics it relied upon were no longer consider vital, in large part of because of their failure as a political doctrine.

In response to these failures, Marxists began to both consider alternative forms of communism and less deterministic conceptions of history. This latter consideration turned to culture and politics as more than a simple reflection of the mode of production. In doing so this rethinking of Marxism became entangled with the rethinking of culture itself and what came to be known as the ‘discursive turn’. Whilst this turn provided a necessary rethinking of Marxism, much has been lost.

Ontology and the Discursive Turn

The turn to language – otherwise known as the linguistic or discursive turn – which has dominated social theory since the 1960s is characterised by the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent development of post-structuralism. The focus on the ontological dominance of language turned the issue of representation and truth into a dilemma for modernism and an impossibility for the postmodern. Rather than conceiving words to be an imitation of the thing they seek to represent, Saussure contended that meaning develops only in relation to other signs; meaning develops from the signifier, not from the referent. For this reason the signifier is arbitrary, contingent upon a history of relationships with other signifiers and meaning is ultimately differential rather than natural. Because meaning is differential, there are no positive meanings – there are no signifiers which mean in and of themselves – and language becomes a negative substance (Ashenden, 2005: 197).

Saussure, however, considered language to be system in the sense that all differential meanings formed a closed chain; structuralism, for post-structuralists like Jacques Derrida, was not radical enough. Structuralism still reproduced the logic and pathos of Western metaphysics, giving language a presence that does not exist. Instead, Derrida problematised the notion of language as a system, describing it as ‘a structure without a centre[MU2] ’. In language, meaning is always deferred, and vitally does not catch up with itself; meaning is always ‘still to come’.

The turn to language led to the dominance of negative ontological theory. It rejected not only a grounding in a natural referent, but also in a transcendental signifier; a signifier with a positive meaning that could somehow ‘fix’ the contingency of all meaning. In Marx’s terms this was the mode of production, from which the superstructure developed. The rejection of the transcendental signifier has had immense implications for social theory and political practice. In theoretical terms, because any sense of meaning could only be grounded in language itself there is no outside to language; Derrida (1976: 158), for example, famously remarked that ‘There is nothing outside of the text’[ii].

This rejection of realism is not necessary idealist. We do not necessarily have to go down the road of Bishop Berkeley, conceiving that only what is constructed in the mind exists. A tree does indeed fall in the woods, despite no one being around to hear it crash. More pertinently, children die in poverty and ice shelves collapse regardless of their documentation[iii]. This is a problem Laclau dealt with effectively in debates with traditional Marxists such as Norman Geras (1987) who were unable to come to grips with the consequences of his re-reading of Marxism through the notions of hegemony and discourse. Laclau states;

… the discursive character of an object does not, by any means, imply putting its existence into question. The fact that a football is only a football as long as it is integrated within a system of socially constructed rules does not mean that is thereby ceases to be a physical object. (Laclau & Mouffe, 1990: 100 – 101, original emphasis)

Nonetheless, language – or, in Laclau terms, discourse – provides the horizon through which things appear meaningful. There can be no sense of objectivity or transcendental truth. This has had significant political consequences, at a theoretical level at least. Political formations could no longer make appeals to something outside of themselves – such as God, the Nation, rationality or human nature – these concepts which once provided a guarantee existed only as differential elements in a chain of infinitely deferred meaning. Nonetheless, attempts to access a sense of essentialist anchor have not ceased. Indeed, as political liberalism began to question what were once considered the foundations of a good society, various fundamentalist narratives have fought back. Many who would consider the concept of a ‘transcendental signifier’ to be academic mumbo-jumbo, still believe in the transcendental status of God and are willing to bring a gun to a town-hall meeting on health care reform to prove it.

The overarching value of the turn to language, however, has been the capacity to understand these movements as ideological attempts to fix the chain of meaning. Ideological critique became not a matter of revealing a concealed concrete truth – that there is no God, perhaps, or the contradictions in the mode of production – but rather in a critique of the abstract manner in which ideological constructions are named. It did not matter what proper name was given to God, only that a God-like signifier had a structuring role at all. Negative ontological political theory did not seek to substitute one truth with another – the Proletariat being a superior Truth than God – but rather began to consider what we meant by ‘Truth’. It is this move – from Truth to the meaning of Truth – that signalled a move from traditional modernism to late modernism and postmodernism.

The turn to language, however, is not a paradoxically homogenous Truth in itself, somehow outside of history. Rather it is a discourse in itself, the fundamental elements of which continue to be a focus of debate. As we shall see in this chapter and the next, there are substantive differences between and within poststructuralist or postmodern ontologies and that of psychoanalysis. Moreover, these differences relate to significant distinctions both in what it means to practice politics and political performance itself. Nonetheless, it is vital to note that the turn to language was a significant moment in political theory. In terms of Marxism, this ontological movement marked a change from culture as a supplement to language and culture as dominant in itself. The turn proved a significant threat to Marxism, already challenged by historical events, the link between which was only just becoming clear. What began as an attempt to supplement Marxism ended up rejecting it all together. Both occurred within the framework of postmodernism.

The Postmodern Break

Postmodernity is, according to Eagleton;

‘The contemporary movement of thought which rejects totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human essence and the possibility of objective knowledge. Postmodernism is sceptical of truth, unity and progress, opposes what it sees as elitism in culture, tends towards cultural relativism, and celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and heterogeneity’ (2003: 13).

Rejecting any possibility of a political anchor that would provide the basis of the kind of essentialism that once defined Marxism, postmodern thought has emphasised the contingency of language and differentiality of meaning. Without any metaphysical ambitions, postmodernism suggests a philosophical relativism that at best provides support for diversity, difference and a flowering freedom of identity positions. At worst this form of social constructivism leads to a cynically debauched wallowing in consumerism and administrated hedonism quite divorced from the politics – and political consequences – of its construction.

Nonetheless, postmodernism did not develop in the absence of Marxism, but partially as an attempt to reform it. Those acknowledged to be at the forefront of postmodernity, including Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard each began their work within the Marxist paradigm (Smart, 2005: 259). If, however, these theorists began with the Marxist problematic they largely distanced themselves from Marx in their latter work. Lyotard, once a strong Marxist and member of French rebel groups Socialism ou Barbarie and Pouvoir Ouvrier, began to theorise in earnest about the rise of postmodernity around the same time that he came to the realisation that the proletariat was no longer a feasible revolutionary subject (Anderson, 1998: 26). Indeed, as Lyotard’s expanded his conception of the postmodern condition it became increasingly directed towards a rejected of the scale and economic determinism in Marxism. Marxism was just as much a rational meta-narrative as capital and as such both should be opposed.

There was much value in the rethinking of Marxism, one that started before the emergence of postmodernism in what came to be known as ‘Western Marxism’. Beginning with the likes of Georg Lucas, Antonio Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, this label emerged largely as a way to distinguish between the ‘messy’ political practice of Marxism in the USSR and more critical and philosophical forms which emerged in the global West. Western Marxism focused more on culture and politics, generally discarding the economic determinism of historical materialism. It arose from attempts to explain the historical failures of Marxism and a recognition that change had to be cultural to be effective as economic conditions alone would not produce revolution.

As a result of the move from economy to culture, much of the rethinking of Marxism was framed in terms of a reconsideration of the essentialist ontology which came to be expressed as the base-superstructure model. What started as an attempt to explain the failure of revolution resulted in the rejection of the idea of revolution all together. Moreover, what begun as an attempt to place more emphasis on politics and culture has resulted in the death of the notion of economy altogether, except in practice. Ironically, as Marxism and Leftist politics have moved away from the economy, capitalism and the logic of the market became more dominant. As Jameson (1991) states ominously;

‘this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world: in the sense, as throughout class history, the underside of culture is blood, torture, death, and terror[MU3] ’

The strongest blow to Marxism was the first. When Lyotard rejected any sense of grand narrative, the narrative to which he referred was Marxism (Eagleton, 2003:38). The death of the grand narrative signals perhaps the most fundamental element of postmodernism; the rejection of foundationalism and essentialism. The awareness that language was only referential without any ultimate guarantee meant there could be no grand narrative on which to support a vision of politics; any such narrative would have to rely upon a signifier that did not rely upon another. Language proved to be a poor substitute for God or transcendental rationality.

Nonetheless, postmodernism looks suspiciously like ‘a new epic fable of the end of epic fables’, as Eagleton put it (ibid: 45). This deterministic narrative about the rejection of deterministic epistemology has led to something of a normative crisis[iv]; it became embarrassing to speak of morality. Morality was for those who broke up parties. Without an essentialist anchor, ethics loses all traction. If the grand narrative is dead, then everything and nothing is possible[v]. Postmodernism, in this sense, can be regarded as deeply conservative, both in the sense that the rejection of all foundations has led many to search for even deeper foundations – hence the rise of fundamentalisms in the 21^st century – and in the dismissal of emancipation that became associated with the death of determinism.

Only the most vulgar forms of postmodernity – generally found in cultural practice, rather than political theory – dismissed the notion of ethics all together, even if morality was a step too far. Postmodern thinkers began to reconsider what it meant to live the good life, a large part of which included the rethinking of ‘good’ meant. Much of the ethical thinking of those of a negative ontological bent was itself negative; a critique of those unities that should be differences. For these postmodernists, any hint of the normative or unity was immediately repressive. Benevolent as it might be to invoke the concept, it immediately restored the primacy of God; etymologists in search of the origins of meaning were the ultimate theists. Because language itself has a normative dimension – language is naturally repressive because it narrows down difference by turning differences into a categorical unity[vi] – the task of postmodern ethics was to open up this unity in a celebration of difference (ibid: 13).

Part of the critical direction of postmodern thought has been against the kind of instrumental rationality promoted by Sachs. Sachs’ positivist epistemology relies heavily on the use of natural science (within which he includes economics) and the positivism of statistical representation. Sachs appears not to consider statistics as a representation, rather they stand to the referent in a relation of direct and unmediated correspondence. If, in a sudden attack of postmodern fancy, Sachs were to conceive of statistics as mere representations, he might have cause to doubt not only his means of mapping suffering, but also his response to it.

Sachs’ rejoinder might be that his work is logical, but for the postmodernists, this is the problem. Lyotard states, according to Eagleton; ‘we do not want to destroy capital because it is not rational, but because it is’ (ibid: 71). Nonetheless, the problem for the postmodern is not that they are representations but that they are treated as if they weren’t. Statistics-as-representations may be open to manipulation, but that does not mean that the suffering they seek to represent does not exist.

Without the presence of a transcendental signifier against which to index a sense of the Good, the prospect of emancipation appeared foolish utopian. Laclau, although not considered a postmodernist, embodied the postmodern position when he stated; ‘We are today at the end of emancipation and at the beginning of freedom’ (Laclau, 1996: 18)[vii]. Whose freedom is up for grabs is uncertain. The loss of the emancipatory drive can be regarded as the biggest loss of postmodernism. Emancipation is precisely not the aim of postmodernism as it would involve unfashionable universal constructions and collective movements whose rationale depend upon an uncritical deployment of one or other grand narrative. Most importantly, emancipation rightfully brought up the question of the auspice under which it would occur. The prospect of widespread political transformation relied upon notions of power and universalism that were no longer palatable. Emancipation sounded too much like the unity of the concept compared to the freedom of difference.

Nonetheless, this is not to suggest that postmodern form of thought view the social world unproblematically. The opposite is properly true; many forms of postmodernity – deconstruction for example – are hypocritical of existing constructions. It is just that for postmodern thought the problem of emancipation amounted to a deconstruction of the meta-physical assumptions inherent in the act of deploying the signifier rather than any actual change in people’s lives.

Yet postmodernism is not without value. The danger inherent in the illusionary nature of truth and essentialism has been the biggest lesson postmodernity has taught Leftist politics. No longer can we hold innocently to any sense of ideology, longing for the annihilation of the enemy who is nothing but a construction of ideology itself. The Left would be more than reticent to forget the horrors that have been committed in its name, particularly in the image of Marxism. As such, for Bauman, postmodernity is modernity without illusions, a reminder that modernity has limits (Bauman, 1993: 32)[viii] .

There is certainly value in a form of ethics which supports difference and breaks down barriers closed by essentialist anchors. Nonetheless, although the expansion of ethics and normatively provided by postmodernity should be celebrated, we should not mistake these new social movements and identity politics as the problems of our time (see Žižek, 2000)[ix]. Indeed, the postmodern rejection of meta-narratives is intimately linked with the positioning of capitalism as the unacknowledged grand narrative of our time, if only in practice rather than theory. This is not to suggest that postmodernity has ushered in the dominance of capitalism, but rather the inadequacy of its political direction. A critique of capitalism does not need to match its logic – indeed this is the problem with Sachs critique of global sustainability; it is too confluent with the capitalist logic of the market – but it does need to acknowledge its ontology.

As a critique of contemporary capitalism, the postmodern project has been particularly insightful; far more than the likes of Sachs, postmodern thought takes capitalism as a condition to be put up for sustained intellectual criticism. Postmodern consumer-finance capitalism[x] does indeed exhibit Marx’s contention that ‘All that is solid melts into thin air’[xi] (c.f. Jameson, 2000).

Yet no form of politics – or even political engagement – appears to stem from any form of postmodernity, particularly in regards to the problem of global sustainability to which this thesis is directed. At best we might consider the disparate realm of postmodern thought to offer a critique of industrial modernism under which the problem has been generated, or a deconstruction of the manner in which it is being discussed. Nonetheless, for postmodern theorists, there appears to be something a little too material, too grand and perhaps too economic about the contradictions of global capitalism – it brings back the haunting spectre of Marxism.

Indeed, we can consider that postmodernism – instead of being a radical form of emancipation from identity – is just the latest form of capitalism. If early modernity had considered capital to require the parochial discipline that characterised the industrial era. Modernity’s combined and uneven entry into a postmodern era was considered to be a mortal threat to the interests of capitalism. For Jameson , however, postmodernity has actually saved capitalism from its own inherent contradictions (Jameson, 1991, 1996). He postulates that the burgeoning development of social identities that came with the birth of postmodernism became a seamless cure for the ills of overproduction, as, along with the financialisation of capital, new social identities were ideal for the development of new products and new markets.

These markets were created upon the predominant form of politics that has emerged from the turn to language and postmodernity, known as the ‘new social movements’, or identity politics. Whilst these movements have provided the impetus for the liberation of very real limitations upon subjective expression, they cannot be considered to be subversive. Rather than acting as a threat to capitalism, working women, racial enlightenment and sexual reform allowed the development of new and profitable markets. Postmodernism may have been experienced as liberation for those outside of the hegemony of the white man within western nations, but it has achieved little more than the commodification of cultural difference. Westerners may have a more diverse range of restaurants at which to eat, but for those whom experience eating as an infrequent necessary, postmodern liberation remains entirely Other[xii].

Thus, while postmodernism acts a valuable reminder of the dangers of some forms of modernist practice it provides no answer to either the problematic posed by Sachs nor his own (hegemonic) pragmatic attempts to restore the smooth functioning of capital. Moreover, postmodernism operates as a supplement to the modernist approach to politics embodied by Sachs. Whilst this form of Leftist administrative politics works pragmatically towards softening the injustices of capitalism, postmodern culture allows for a celebration of its benefits. Ultimately there is something a little tragic about postmodernity; the Left appears gun-shy, unwilling to take power in any radical sense lest the mistakes of the past are repeated.

It is, as Eagleton states in regards to the foundations of the Western empire; ‘a rather awkward moment in human history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions’ (2003:102). Whilst lessons must be learned from postmodern discourse on epistemology and ontology, the circumstances of today, in which the contradictions of capitalism are becoming more apparent yet political alternatives are all but extinct, demand a re-entry into the political and the question of universality. Moreover, whilst the postmodern reading of Marxism has been necessary, this reading has taken away the universal dimension of Marxism’s critique of capitalism; that capitalism must be opposed through a discourse of emancipation is several steps too far for many forms of postmodern discourse.

Marxism remains the radical alternative form of political economy against the meta-hegemony of capitalism. It is only through Marxism that the dimension of political economy remains alive. In order to respond to the material contradictions of global capitalism, we must not accept the split horizon constituted by Sachs and the postmodernists. Rather we must return to a rethinking of the Marxist tradition and the dimension of universality. The difficulty lies in proceeding with a Marxist approach without the materialist guarantee of history that supported the sense of normativity which hegemonised Marxian politics. We must consider how can one hold to class exploitation as the ultimate form of capitalism, or communism as unquestionable form of the good whilst accepting the ontological differentiality of the signifier. Even if we take comfort from Marx’s own rejection of morality, we must note that he was only able to hold this position on the basis of his determinist conception of history.

Against these difficulties, it has been the restoration of universality as a category within a consideration of the discursive turn which has provided the impetus for post-Marxist theory, which conceived of the discursive turn not as a threat but rather as a vital moment in the renewal of the Marxist historical project. Nonetheless, despite this restoration of the primacy of Marxism itself, communism and class struggle appeared to fade away, leaving Marxism without the critical edge provided by its theoretical foundations. It is to Laclau and post-Marxism that we now turn.

(Post)Marxism, Laclau and the Shrinking Hegemony of Socialist Strategy

Perhaps the first text in what is now regarded as post-Marxist theory is Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). This breakthrough book introduced both discourse theory and its political dimension, radical democracy. Laclau and Mouffe began from the Marxist tradition – the work attempts to re-articulate socialist strategy (emphasis is required on both these terms) and uses Gramsci’s reading of the Marxist concept of hegemony to do so – but establishes a strong break with Marxism, such that it is the first openly ‘post-Marxist’ text. Post-Marxist discourse is split between, as Mark Devenney states;

‘the need to “keep in sight the normative idealism which underpins one spirit of Marx, the insistence that things ought to be otherwise[and]…On the other hand post-Marxist accounts cannot retain intact the rationalist and deterministic limitations of the Western Marxist tradition’ (2002: 9).

Moreover, following Jameson’s (1996: 1) contention that post-Marxism’s emerge in response to changes in the structure of capitalism, Chamsy el-Ojeili (2009) argues that we can identify a ‘Post-Marxism I and Post-Marxism II’. He suggests that the first associates Marxism with the ‘sins’ of modernism and consists of a rethinking of its theoretical framework without necessarily developing the political consequences of this revaluation. As such, this move relocates the locus of ‘Marxist’ critique from capitalism to modernism. As a consequence the central tenant of this form of post-Marxism is that the problem with both Marxism and capitalism is that they are both too rational, too modernist; instead, an entirely different mode of being is required. In this sense, post-Marxism remains Marxist by association only, having more in common with the forms of postmodernity described in the previous section (ibid: 41-44).

By contrast, post-Marxism II, as conceived by el-Ojeili, is more of a rejuvenated response to the restructuring and expansion of global capitalism. These forms, and here el-Ojeili includes Badiou as well as Hardt and Negri, focus more on Marxist politics rather than their theoretical underpinning (ibid:46). We shall deal with all these approaches (within which we also include Zizek) within the thesis as we consider the prospects for Marxism theory after the turn to language. For now, however, we shall consider Laclau’s rethinking of both Marxist theory and politics, acknowledging that post-Marxism has come to be ‘hegemonically’ characterised by Laclau’s discourse theory and the Essex school at which he is based.

Along with Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau’s approach has been further supplemented with the follow up New Reflections on the Revolutions of Our Time (1990), in which Laclau (particularly in a chapter co-authored with Mouffe, Post-Marxism without Apologies (1990)) declares an affinity to Marxism and to the benefits of psychoanalysis, but ultimately argues that it is the category of discourse which holds the trump card. For Laclau, if language constructs the social field, this construction is never complete, such that ‘Society does not exist’. This incomplete field of meanings is what Laclau labels discourse. The battle of politics – a battle of hegemony – is the ultimately impossible struggle to fix meaning around certain nodal signifier. These signifiers – which Laclau labels empty signifiers – establish a chain of equivalence.

It is around the empty signifier that Laclau, against the central thrust of postmodernity, attempts to return to the category of universality. This restoration, however, has little in common with the sense of universality apparent in the modernist tradition in which Marx was embedded. Early modernism – that established before the discursive turn – assumed an objective correspondence between language and the material world. As such, establishing a universal truth, either in terms of ontology or politics, was a matter of the correct epistemological approach. We see this in Marx’s historical materialism, where he argued that an objective, and thus universal, truth could be established by using the correct interpretative tools. Moreover, this approach remains hegemonic amongst the ‘adminstrative Left’ we noted in the introductory chapter. Sachs, for example, assumes that natural science is wholly objective. Moreover, he comes to argue that the capitalist form of economics is the universal form and can thus be applied ‘clinically’ to the symptoms of global capitalism.

In contrast, postmodernist forms of thought rejected the possibility of any form of universality, arguing that the lack of any final transcendental signifier meant that any instantiation of truth could only be differential and particular. For Laclau, however, the focus on particularism, as well as being philosophically inept, was also a form of political defeatism. Instead, if movements are to grip the polis they must appeal to universality. In regards to the impotence of particularly, Laclau (and Mouffe) stated;

‘If the demands of a subordinated group are presented purely as negative demand subversive of a certain order, without being linked to any viable project for the reconstruction of specific areas of society, their capacity to act hegemonically will be excluded from the outset’(1985: 189).

Laclau (1996: 36) nonetheless argues – for the same reasons asserted by postmodernist thinkers – that the universal is impossible, yet he insists it is necessary. This simultaneous necessary is asserted by the presence of the empty signifier which holds the place of the universal. The signifier which holds this place is not naturally given, but rather established by way of discursive battles for hegemony. Given that the categories of discourse and hegemony define the political field, political battles become strategic, with particular grouping forming coalitions under a single signifier. If at the moment the hegemonic radical Leftist signifier is ‘Green’, than ‘chains of equivalence’ build around this signifier, with the result that Green groupings, whether political parties or otherwise, come to hold the multiple demands which characterise contemporary Leftist politics, most notably the politics of anti-discrimination.

Moreover, Laclau does not only designate a formal matrix of political performance, but supplements this ontology with a normative vision, one that subverts the possibility of any sense of foundational normativity. Laclau’s sense of the normative stems, like Marx, from his ontological commitments. For Laclau, the contingency of language allows for the possibility of human freedom from ideological subjugation and containment. As such, the early Laclau suggested that this freedom is best represented by what he, amongst others, labels ‘radical democracy’.

Radical democracy has two dimensions. The first is a celebration of contingency. Laclau argued that; ‘True liberation does not therefore consist in projecting oneself towards a moment that would represent the fullness of time, but, on the contrary, in showing the temporal – and consequently transient – character of all fullness’ (1990: 193) and goes on to state; ‘A free society is not one where a social order has been established that is better adapted to human nature, but one which is more aware of the contingency and historicity of any order’ (ibid: 211).

Yet, there is an apparent contradiction here, one that also haunted Marx’s work. It is because Laclau sought to envisage politics ‘beyond the positivity of the social’[xiii] (1985: 93) that he came to reject traditional Marxist-Socialist strategy in favour of the categories of hegemony and discourse. This is, if nothing else, a conception of human nature, leading to a social order which is better adapted to that nature; without the production of antagonisms which have haunted essentialist politics. Certainly, Laclau would be extremely reluctant to be associated with any notion of ‘human nature’, but such a postulation is simply the condition of possibility for any theory of being.

Ultimately, Laclau is unable to historcise his own sense of historicity – that his post-essentialist sense of democracy is situated within the dialectics of history. This historical positioning leads to Laclau’s conception of the content of the radical democratic horizon. This consists of an articulation around the fundamental inconsistency of discourse and hegemony. Laclau comes to suggest – with an increasingly loose reference to socialism – that the best strategy for Leftist politics is the development of an articulated coalition of what had come to be known as new social movements, predominately consisting of identity politics, post-colonialism and the burgeoning ecological movement. The key to this strategy has been the dismissal of any notion of a single, privileged agent of change – the revolutionary subject – in favour of the politics of hegemony and the empty signifier.

Laclau’s work, however, has come in for strident critique from within the discipline; so much so that has work has radically changed direction over recent years. The first critique pertains largely to the same issues that affect Lacanian ethics. That is, both the dismissal of the politics of a negative ontology, often by Marxists suffering from both nostalgia and more than a hint of historical blindness (cf. Geras, 1987), and the more considered critique of those that suggest that the Laclauian approach is unable to posit an normative sense of itself. In this sense Laclau’s Marxism is subject to the same nihilistic critique that has plagued continental philosophy since Kant, that of establishing a sense of the ‘Good’ without a foundational signifier which would guarantee the Good.

Laclau’s solution is a radical recognition of that which is not contingent, contingency itself. If, however, for Laclau the society that is most free is that which is aware of its dependency upon discourse, one must consider what this means for those bodies which have been excluded from the material fruits for society. One could perhaps expand Laclau’s thesis – which he does not do – to suggest that the exclusion of these bodies would be recognised as part of the awareness that Laclau suggests is necessary. Moreover, this awareness could be extended via included the previously excluded within a democratic chain of equivalence.

If Marx attempted to circumvent this problem with his ‘scientific’ historical materialism, which did not rely upon an ideological morality as much as a faith in the progress of history, than the postmodern critique of this determinism left Marxism without any reason to be ‘Marxist’. That is, without a transcendental support for the politics of class struggle and politics, either from a descriptive reading of history or abstract moral prescription, there appeared little reason for post-Marxist thought to reference itself to Marxism.

Indeed, this was the case with Laclau. Although his breakthrough text referenced a rethinking of socialist strategy – and a rethinking of the contingency imposed by postmodernity – he came to rely on democracy and politics at the expense of class and the economy to such an extent that he work could no longer be reasonably considered to be Marxist. Marxism, it seemed, had become an empty signifier around which the Left could rally to establish their radical credentials. In terms of political practice, the only difference – with the exception of some institutional tweaking – between the politics of radical democracy supported by the early Laclau and the liberal democracy practiced under late capitalism is its theoretical reference.

For this reason, for those who still hold to a both a strident critique of capitalism and the validity of Marxist discourse, Laclau work has come under attack. The primary motivation behind post-Marxism is the economy cannot be an object in itself and as such cannot determine social relations other than the through the contingency of hegemony. Thus the economy is not economic in and of itself, but rather just another element of political discourse. Laclau does not seek to consider the economy, capitalism or class struggle in anything but a dismissive sense. Arguing that there is no difference between postmodern struggles and class struggle, Laclau rejects any sense of primacy to the economy, contending; ‘class struggle is just one species of identity politics, and one which is becoming less and less important in the way we live’(Laclau, 2000: 203). In a sense, Laclau is correct; class struggles are becoming less important in the way we (the West) live. It is just that for Laclau this is a point of celebration. Those on the wrong end of class struggle may have cause to disagree. It appears that the category of discourse collapses all other distinctions; the economy is as discursive as ideology. The difficulty with Laclau’s post-Marxism, however, is that it has struggled to develop a conception of the economic away from its rejection of Marx’s essentialist notion of the economy (Devenney, 2002; 18).

Devenney’s contention that post-Marxism has lost its critique of the economy should be treated symptomatically; it is not a contemporary aberration, to be resolved with better application of the theory, as Devenney treats it, but rather an indication of a structural impossibility within post-Marxism in regards to the impossibility of political economy and class struggle. If traditional Marxism, and as we shall see, Zizek, attributed a causal positioning to class struggle and political economy, this cannot be held within a discursive approach. Laclau’s theory of hegemony allows for one element to hold a determining spot, but this cannot be determined a priori – rather it is achieved through a battle for hegemony. Without this prioritisin of the economy, Marxism loses much of its political edge.

Laclau’s position reminds us of the 1970s feminist slogan, ‘The personal is political’ and its infamous rejoinder ‘the personal is personal too, so piss off’. Yes, the economy is political, but it is also economic. Just because the economy is always political does not mean that politics is equivalent to economics. Rather the economy is always the political economy. We shall speak more to this matter in Chapter Six when we consider Žižek’s Lacanian critique of economy, determinism, and of causality.

Laclau’s (non)conception of capitalism and his rejection of any special status (or, indeed, content) to Marxism or class struggle leaves him with an overly optimistic, even naive, notion of political performance. Perhaps because of this, Laclau’s work remains abstract – by contrast to Žižek, Laclau is not known for his detailed elaboration of actually existing politics – and his politics often appear quite ‘out of this world’. Indeed, in a recent heated dialogue with Žižek, Laclau accuses the former of ‘waiting for the Martians’ in a reference to Žižek’s desire to reinstall the category of class struggle (Laclau, 2006: 657). In response, Žižek states that waiting for Martians is the perfect way to describe Laclau’s theory of hegemony. The difference between Laclau and his own work, however, is that; ‘ I[Žižek] (am supposed to) believe in real Martians, while he knows that the place of Martians is forever empty, so that all we can do is invest empirical agents with “Martain value”’(Žižek, 2008: 294).

Finally, despite an initial affinity and endorsement of psychoanalysis, particularly in regards to the institutionalisation of lack in the struggle for hegemony, Laclau has struggled to integrate his reading of discourse with the materiality of psychoanalysis. As a consequence, it is difficult to conceptualise why universal signifiers would have any more hold over the subject than particular elements – an issue we shall deal with in some detail in the following chapter (see alsoGlynos & Stavrakakis, 2003; Laclau, 2003; Stavrakakis, 2007).

In response to these criticisms, Laclau has subsequently moved away from Mouffe and Radical Democracy to a form of politics that el-Ojeili would regard as part of post-Marxism II. Laclau’s contemporary thought attempts to construct a theory of populism and ‘the construction of the people’ (Laclau, 2005, 2006), a strategy that has moved away from the institutionalisation of lack, focusing primarily on the role of affective identifications in the determination of hegemony. For Laclau, populism is a ‘pure’ form of politics, a politics which coincides with his theory of hegemony. There are few remnants, however, of the reliance upon contingency which dominated his conception of radical democracy. Instead democracy now accounts for one ‘moment’ within populist discourse[MU4] .

This political content consists of a construction of the people as a political subject, giving them, in Žižek’s terms, ‘Martian Value’. Just as Laclau opined that society does not exist, neither do the people. As such any construction of the people is a hegemonic one, requiring the exclusion of an antagonistic enemy from the chain of equivalence. In this way, Žižek suggests, not only is fascism a form of populism – ‘Jew’ is the ultimate signifier of lack constructed to fill the lack in the big Other – but populism entails a naturalisation and a potential suspension of the political (Žižek, 2008:276-285).

To summarise, Laclau’s descriptive ontology has remained the same, but his politics have flipped entirely from the negative to the positive. Both radical democracy and populism rely upon a constitutive impossibility within linguistic structure. This point of impossibility signals the empty place of universality; the element which comes to hold this position is regarded as universal. For the early Laclau, politics should directed towards holding this place open to allow the inherent dislocatory freedom of language to operate. By contrast, Laclau’s populism now suggests that the key task of any political movement is to hold the place of hegemony. This move suggests a radical transition from the politics of lack to the politics of jouissance, although Laclau would not want to use the term. We shall turn to consider the contours of jouissance in the next chapter and its political possibilities in Chapters Four and Five.

Populism, at least in the sense in which it is practiced by politicians like Hugo Chavez, provides some hope for the hungry by mobilising resources around their plight; it certainly provides a feasible sense of politics, a politics which work. Nonetheless in doing so, it fails prey to the same factors that plagued his conception of hegemony and Radical Democracy; an ethical deficit and an inability to consider capitalism in any detail. Moreover, although his notion of populism appears a move powerful political device, in relying upon the positioning of an antagonism to create ‘the people’, Laclau appears to be returning to the same positivising sense of the social against which his initially rallied. Populism may reject the historical naturalism of the revolutionary subject, but in accepting that the place of the ‘people’ can and should be held, Laclau’s politics are not markedly different from forms of Marxism before the discursive turn; populism is Marxism without the economy.

In this sense, Laclau’s work cannot be considered to restore Marxism in any manner which provides a response to the global sustainability problematic. Although Laclau’s attempt to restore the dimension of universality to Marxist discourse should be welcomed, his politics, whether radical democracy or populism, operate through the exclusion of class struggle and the economy. Laclau’s work may mark an advance on the contingent ethics of particularity and difference that has characterised the divergent realm of postmodernity, it has not been able to compensate for the losses associated with the (justified) rejection of historical materialism. In rejecting the economic determinism, Laclau has rejected economy altogether and in doing so no longer engages with global capitalism. Instead Laclau’s work reads as a critique of the difficulties of the politics of modernity.

By contrast, interactions between psychoanalysis and Marxism have tended to engage with political economy. Moreover, psychoanalysis, particularly in its Lacanian variety, has been able to return to materiality in its reading of the discursive turn.

Psycho-Marxism

Since its development, psychoanalysis – with its focus on the unconscious, repression, sexuality, desire and the death drive as the destructive core of humanity – has had a major impact on social theory. The engagement with psychoanalysis has enlarged the understanding of ideology, subjectivity, the role of culture and enjoyment in politics and the relationship between the individual and society (Elliott, 2005: 175). Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) exemplified psychoanalysis as a sociological pursuit as Freud developed an understanding of the manner in which the demands of civilised society required a level of repression in the subject which was expressed in a destructive manner[xiv]. We shall explore this more in Chapter Four.

Freud was re-read by Lacan – who maintained he was only supplementing Freud’s work –reworking psychoanalysis in light of Saussure’s structural linguistics, famously stating that; ‘the unconscious is structured like a language. (Elliot, 2005: 181). By this Lacan meant that ‘language, as a system of differences, constitutes the subject’s repressed desire’ (ibid: 182). In this sense, unconscious desire, like language, constitutes an intersubjective space between and within individual subjects (ibid: 183). Moreover, intersubjectivity – with the impossibilities associated with its constitution as a linguistically deferred system – is the only form of subjectivity. As Anthony Elliot (2004: 1) states;

‘For many, the theoretical advantages of Lacan’s Freud concerned, above all, his inflation of the role of language in the construction of the psyche, an inflation which happened to fit hand in glove with the ‘linguistic turn’ of the social sciences.’

Lacanian theory[xv], it seemed, had come along at just the right moment, speaking to the dilemmas of postmodernism whilst responding to the problematic to which postmodernism was itself a response. Against the postmodernists, but within the linguistic turn, Lacanian psychoanalysis achieved an alternative hegemony by responding to several of the problems which haunted postmodernism. In particular, Lacanian thought sought to rehabilitate subjectivity, structure and the body, each of which shall be expanded on in much more detail in the following chapter. Moreover, through the rejuvenation of these categories, Lacanian theory offered a new way to re-read Marxism and its relationship to the discursive turn.

The difficulties of combining psychoanalysis and Marxism are intertwined with the collective hope and traumatic failure of Leftist emancipation. Following the dis-ease with the improper progress of Marxist practice and theory, psychoanalysis has been long looked upon both as the saviour and the failure of radical Leftist politics. Yet no stable theoretical fusion has developed between the two traditions and contemporary theory has come to regard the notion of collective emancipation as rather pathetically passé. Instead of hope, our society holds onto the contradictory fetishes of the necessity of the grand-narrative of capitalism and the contingency of language and culture, between which lies a theoretical waste land where only the brave or unaware dare to stride.

Psychoanalysis was initially attached to Marxism to explain the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in response to the continued presence and development of capitalism. In this initial relationship, characterised by the Freudian Marxism of Wilhelm Reich and the Frankfurt School theorists, psychoanalysis was used to add a theory of subjectivity to Marxism in the face of the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. These theories of subjectivity focused mainly on the role of culture in mediating the effects of capitalism and preventing a true class consciousness from emerging.

If this could be described as the first phase of ‘Psycho-Marxism’ the second phase was dominated by Louis Althusser’s structuralist revision of Marxism (Miklitsch, 1998: 85). Althusser did not seek to fuse together the two discourses, but rather take advantage of what he believed to be a structural homology between class struggle and the unconscious (Özselcuk & Madra, 2007: 86). Althusser’s return to Marx through psychoanalysis was the first to be dominated by Lacan, rather than Freud. As such, it cultivated a re-reading of Freud as well, framed in Lacanian terms. Althusser was perhaps the first to politicise Lacanian thought in his reworking of Marxism and ideology. Althusser used Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage to exemplify (mis)recognition in ideology through what he called ‘interpellation’. Althusser’s work had a strong influence upon efforts to rework both Marxist determinism and the role of culture and ideology in maintaining the dominance of capital.

Lacan’s focus on language as an (unconscious) structuring element of the human psyche has made psychoanalysis a necessarily sociological investigation, one that could be integrated with Marxism not by way of adding a theory of the psyche, as in Freudian Marxism, but rather as an equal contribution to a theory of intersubjectivity.

The movement from Freud to Lacan proved to be both a threat and opportunity for Marxist theory. Lacan’s emphasis on the structuring role, and ultimate failure, of language removed the foundations of theoretical Marxist essentialism and previously assumed forms of political action associated with socialism or communism. The normative drive may have remained as a reference point, but the essentialist justifications had long disappeared, dispatched to a theoretical attic to allow for occasional bouts of nostalgia. Importantly, however, this dimension was not dismissed altogether as in forms of postmodernity. Althusser and those that followed remained committed to Marxism for a reason, although others may not have been so sure. The problem was that while psychoanalysis did not fall prey to the transgressive particularism of postmodernity, it did share a deep suspicion of politics, utopianism and revolution. If critics have found psychoanalysis woefully inadequate as a political touchstone, then traditionalist Marxists certainly did not find it a suitable torch bearer.

Although Marxism and psychoanalysis share several theoretical similarities – a committed engagement to reducing the gap between theory and practice, a similar notion of causality (in terms of class struggle and the unconscious respectively) and a radically divergent focus on generating change – in both their underlying ontology and emancipatory optimism they proved radically incompatible. For some, such as Sean Homer (Homer, 2001), this makes any attempt to develop psychoanalytic Marxism as a singular practice a foolish pursuit. He claims that Žižek’s ‘Lacanism appears to rule out the possibility of any orthodox ‘understanding’ of Marxism’ (ibid: 7). Yet, despite the apparent tension, the use of Lacan opened up the possibility of new forms of Marxism.

Likewise, Sean Homer (1996: 109) argued that although psychoanalysis can engage in a ‘continuing critical dialogue with political and social theory’, because it is constitutively unable to develop a positive sense of ideology, other more reactionary positions will fill this gap. For this reason psychoanalytic discourse is an inappropriate partner for Leftist political practice. Furthermore, Elizabeth Bellamy (1993) comes to argue that whilst psychoanalysis has tremendous analytic potential, it does not offer any more fruitful opportunities for political action than had already been developed in the discursive turn.

More subtly, Glyn Daly (1999), whilst considering the benefits of (Žižekian) psychoanalysis, argues that psychoanalytic theory misses more subtle opportunities for political action that could be more fruitfully explored in combination with post-structuralism or deconstruction Psychoanalysis, it seemed, explained the domination of capitalism and the hopelessness of culture a little too well. It all appeared too inevitable; one of the central critiques of Žižek at least is that he misses the more subtle opportunities for political action. If for Zizek policy developments, say around the legislation of same-sex marriage or changes in immigration law, say nothing about the logic of capital, it is not that they do not nothing at all. As we shall discuss latter in this text, this reading of the subtly of Zizek’s political practice is perhaps a little harsh – based as it is upon his reading of ontic structure of global capitalism – it is necessary to note that Zizek’s ‘all or nothing’ approach leads to political positions not far divorced from the conservative right. If Zizek would argue that the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference was a waste of time, those who agree with his reading of capital might agree, but we would still have cause to consider how this political statement might diverge from those apologists for capitalism who are making the same argument.

Much – if not all – of this criticism is directed at Žižek. It is directed at Žižek not only because he is the most significant scholar in the discourse, but also because his form of politics relies heavily upon a reading of Marxism that both re-establishes and circumvents the central currents of traditional Marxist politics – most notably class struggle and communism.

Žižek’s interpretation of Marxism operates as an antagonistic answer to the question of universality and truth. Without wanting to re-occupy any nostalgic sense of Marxist essentialism, he demands that the Left respond to the dominance of capital. Žižek embodies the impossibilities of Leftist politics because whilst his work grapples with the same difficulties of representation that have brought the downfall of traditional Left (essentialist) politics, he maintains that the Left must not abandon the political terrain either by giving way to the dilemmas of representation by losing sight of the economy. As such, although couched within a reading of both psychoanalysis and Marxism, much of the remainder of this thesis entails a reading of the difficulties, challenges and possibilities offered by Zizek’s work. If in responding to the crisis of global sustainability we had reason to again turn to Marxism, in our reading of the difficulties of approaching Marxism after the discursive turn, we have cause to turn to Zizek.

Thus, having introduced the dilemmas of post-Marxism and the psychoanalytic response, it is now time to turn to psychoanalysis itself in order to properly consider Zizek’s work. Although we have thus far introduced psychoanalytic discourse as a positive contributor to Marxism, the situation is far more complex. Through its conception of symbolic castration, psychoanalysis allows for a reading of the discursive turn which is rooted in the body. In doing so it is better able to materialise discourse and explain the apparent fixity of the symbolic order. Moreover, primarily through Žižek’s work, a return to the economy is possible without a strict determinism (this shall be the subject of Chapter Six). In doing so, we see that following the rejection of historical materialism and the political vacuum which followed psychoanalysis adds to the explanatory power of Marxism, providing an understanding of the difficulty of shifting capitalism and hence the possibilities for doing so without the inevitably of history.

As such, the psychoanalytic reading of Marxism suggests the possibility of restoring Marxism as a political force in order to provide a response to the global sustainability problematic. Conversely, whilst this ‘psycho-Marxism’ may be able to better explain the difficulties of acting against the contradictions of global capitalism, in the next chapter we shall see that no form of politics – certainly in terms of the material reproduction of shared social life – naturally stems from the combination of Lacan and Marx. If historical materialism produced not only a reading of capitalism but the inevitable progression of the revolutionary subject, Zizek’s dialectical materialism provides little such confidence. Indeed, Lacanian theory may act as the ultimate dismissal of traditional Marxist politics, leaving the question of politics and normativity in the rebellious hands of psychoanalytic discourse and its central troublemaker, Zizek.

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[i] Such an interpretation already places this text within the discursive epoch.

[ii] By this Derrida did not strictly mean that there is no materiality outside of textuality, but rather than every text can only be interpreted through another text, not by reference to an outside referent.

[iii] This is not to degrade the political importance of representation, only to suggest that representation does not define existence.

[iv] Given Marx’s own rejection of morality, there is something quite comedic about this normative crisis which followed the downfall of the Marxist hegemony

[v] This is the paradox of the death of ‘God’, otherwise known as the transcendental signifier. If the original fear of the theists (linguistic or otherwise) was that the dismissal of this guarantee would mean the end of order, then perhaps the opposite has occurred; we have invented new signifiers to fill this lack. Moreover, because they are self-imposed they have an even stronger disciplinary effect. We see this change in the move from a sovereign authority to the all-seeing discipline of panoptical control; if God is dead, than nothing is permitted.

[vi] For instance the concept of ‘tree’ collapses a number of different types of trees under a singular meaning. Likewise, the signifier ‘Women’ is repressive because it ignores the difference between different categories of Women e.g. Black women, working women, homosexual Women, all of which are themselves are repressive concepts…

[vii] Here Laclau contrasts emancipation and freedom by reference to transcendentalism and dislocation. Freedom occurs at the point of dislocation from the existing symbolic order. Freedom is not a place but rather an action. By contrast, for Laclau emancipation remains within a transcendental construction of a place of freedom that we might reach (1996: 18-19). This construction is confluent with a number of ethical positions after the discursive turn – Lacanian psychoanalysis one of them – it appears to have little in from those whose suffering is more than symbolic.

[viii] Bauman, however, goes beyond this, suggesting that the postmodern subject is aware of truth itself. If we can consider this to be the case, it could only be a cynical recognition of truth

[ix] Identity politics, rather than being an exemplary element of postmodernism rather embodies the position of cultural studies between modernism and postmodernism. Identity politics, although a form of particularly concurrent with postmodernism, is an attempt to establish an essential unity that is quite opposed to the celebration of difference which characterises postmodernity. Nonetheless, in terms of political positioning, identity politics and cultural studies have much in common

[x] A solid argument can be made for this form of capitalism as late capitalism, rather than postmodern, but we shall soon discuss this in reference to Jameson

[xi] We shall focus on the link between postmodernity and finance capital – in particular the fall of money as a general equivalent – in Chapter Six.

[xii] Moreover, no hegemonic mode of politics has developed from postmodern thought. This is no specific reason to discount it, but it is worth noting that politics in the United States is divided between the pragmatist Democrats and fundamentals Republicans, rather than any sense of the postmodern. Postmodernism exists, but as a form of cultural practice and commodification. For this reason, postmodern culture can be considered as a hegemonic historical response to the impossibility of class struggle.

[xiii] ‘Beyond the Positivity of the Social’ is the title of the most influential chapter in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, signalling a re-reading of hegemony and introducing the concepts of dislocation and antagonism.

[xiv] This is a line of thought further developed by Herbert Marcuse in particular

[xv] Lacan himself was working contemporarously with postmodernism, but his work has since come to be seen as a response to postmodernity

[xvi] Elliot too remarks; ‘Indeed, for some considerable period of time, it seemed that theory just wasn’t theory unless the name Lacan was referenced’ (2004: 1)

[MU1]Update this section as its contours become clearer

[MU2]Derrida 1967 reference?

[MU3]Page 4 of printout

[MU4]Do I require a closer reading, quotes and references etc?

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Universality and Communist Strategy

Posted on February 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Universality and Communist Strategy

‘The 21^st Century will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life’

With this opening statement of Jeffery Sachs’ seminal text, Common Wealth (2008), Sachs unwittingly says far more than he desires. Sachs intends to argue that a number of alterations are required in order to make the global economy sustainable. Symptomatically, what he announces is that in order to produce a truly globally sustainable economy, global capitalism cannot continue. The logical consequence of both Sachs’ work and the contradictions of global capitalism are such that anything less will produce an environmental and political catastrophe. Either way, our assumptions about economic life will certainly be over-turned – just not in the way that Sachs intends.

Sachs’ work identifies a multi-dimensional problematic that faces humanity, which he defines as the challenge of global sustainability; ‘protecting the environment, stabilising the world’s population, narrowing the gaps between rich and poor, and ending extreme poverty’(ibid: 3). These problems are shared by all of humanity; ‘a common fate on a crowded planet’(ibid).

Amongst the economic ‘assumptions’ that Sachs believes will be overturned in this century are the end of American hegemony, the emergence of new technologies and the end of the notion of competing nation-states, as a new era of global cooperation comes to dominate this enlightened planet. These changes will come on the back of enlightened reflection as capitalism, once drunk on its own excesses, will look in the mirror Sachs provides and emerge clean and triumphant. Ultimately, however, Sachs’ work is ignorant towards the kind of overturning of economic life that would be necessary to respond to his own problematic – he is simply unwilling to overturn his assumptions about economic life.

Sachs is no marginal figure and his identification of the material deprivations and contradictions which current plague humanity are the problems of today. Sachs is head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and director of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Project. This project announced the setting of 15 ‘Millennium Development Goals’ to be achieved by 2015 (United Nations, 2008). Amongst these goals are targets to ‘Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger’, ‘Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources’ and ‘Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers (Sachs, 2005b: xvii:xix)[i].

Sachs suggests that progress towards these goals is obstructed by four demands; Human pressures on ecosystems and the climate, world population growth, extreme poverty and global problem solving processes (Sachs, 2008: 6). These problems do not exist in isolation. Increases in population and economic growth multiply global economic activity, placing unsustainable pressure upon the environment. Sustained economic growth, both from the Western world and from the developing world – primarily China and India, but also Brazil and Russia – combined with continued growth of the world economy has meant that global economic production has risen by eight times from 1950-2008 (Sachs, 2008: 19). Given further economic growth and population increases, gross world product is predicted to rise by 6.3 times over the period 2005-2050 (ibid: 23).

Characteristically, Sachs reduces these pressures to a simple economic equation[ii], used to determine environment impact: total population (P), income per person (A) and the environmental impact per dollar of income (T), otherwise known as the level of technology. From this equation the total impact (I) on the environment can be calculated by the equation I= P x A x T (a high T value signifying a high environment effect) (ibid:29).

Using this equation, Sachs suggests that since the global population is predicted to rise by 40% and global income to quadruple, the impact on the environment with unchanged technology would be six times that experienced today (ibid). He argues that since the current human impact on the environment is unsustainable, a six fold impact would be ‘devastating’, leading to certain environmental catastrophe. Sachs, however, rejects the view that he attributes to ‘some environmentalists’ that the only solution to this apparent contradiction is a reduction of income levels (ibid: 30). Certainly, a sudden reduction in income is not the appropriate solution as reductions in economic output tend to most savagely affect those on the bottom of global capitalism’s economic ‘ladder’ more than the upper rungs. Unfortunately, neither contraction nor expansion will solve this problem. Capitalism is stuck between attempts to raise large portions of the global population out of poverty and the environmental consequences of this move. If this appears to be an impossible quandary, Sachs’ saviours are technology and global cooperation.

Sachs is certainly not the only person to take on either global poverty or environmentalism; both have become the central causes of global Leftism[iii]. For many of the conservative or neo-liberal commentators, this split either is not of our concern – environmental degradation being a myth and global poverty not ‘our’ problem – or does not require attention because the market will naturally come to the party. While we shall return to these ideologies in passing, they are not the specific concern of this thesis. There are two reasons for overlooking these approaches.

Firstly, this thesis operates under the assumption both that climate change is occurring and that global hunger and suffering are the concern of all humanity, not least because of our active implication in this implicit trauma. We shall not, however, seek to engage in a discussion of either of these assumptions; they simply form the background of this debate. If the identification of the occurrence of climate change is a grand scientific cock-up and humanity is content to live in a world in which the richest 20% account for 80% of global consumption and 80% of the world’s population exists on less than US$10 a day, then much of this debate is useless. We should unburden ourselves from these tiresome grievances and head down to the pub. It is the wager of this thesis that this is not the case.

Secondly, we will not actively engage in debate with neo-liberal ideologues because they embody the worst of capitalism. They are an actually existing straw man. Instead, we shall invoke Sachs because he represents the most enlightened form of contemporary discourse. Sachs cogently identifies the fundamental concern of humanity in the 21^st century; climate change, the material deprivations of the poor and the impossible gap which separates them, and his approach embodies the best available response from within the logic of capital.

Sachs is fundamentally correct in asserting that our current trajectory is unsustainable nor does our current approach offer any feasible solution, suggesting that; ‘A world of untrammelled market forces and competing nation-states offers no automatic solutions’ (ibid: 6). Instead, we must go outside of the market through governmental and trans-governmental incentives and cooperation. These measures act only as a supplement to the market. Sachs essentially acknowledges that not only is the market environmentally unsustainable in its current state but does nothing for those excluded from the development ladder (ibid: 32). What he does not rule out, however, is that once the distortions to the market are straightened out, the market will enable the forms of justice that Sachs desires.

Sachs does not reject the market, only its failures. In a typically liberal stance, Sachs suggests that what is required for the efficient operation of the market is a set of trans-market measures, such as improvements in technology, infrastructure, and education in the third world (ibid: 42). The market will do the rest. What Sachs has not been able to acknowledge is that today, there is no workable outside to market forces. As we have seen from global climate change negotiations, proposing limits to carbon production becomes politically unsustainable as the market begins to react to these restrictions[iv]. Capital flight is very real, yet for Sachs it appears that global cooperation motivated only by a sense of the good will occur because the subject will come to accept the rationality of Sachs’ economic and political science.

While Sachs does well to identify in some detail the alarming state of the world economy, his solution is laughably naive. He appears to have a strong grasp of the intricacies of the natural environment, but he has a very limited, deterministic, conception of human behaviour. Not only does Sachs overly rely on the positivism of scientific research and statistics – a point to which we shall soon return –his work proceeds through a substantial bracketing of the political nature of human behaviour. Ethics are for administrators and morality the preordained domain of the market with its self-evident release of political autonomy and freedom from material want. That the market is the creator of both need and want is beside the point.

Two points are particularly symptomatic in regards to the bracketing of the difficulties inherent in human behaviour. Sachs boasts that his Earth Institute brings together ‘physical scientists, ecologists, engineers, economists, political scientists, management experts, public health specialists and medical doctors’ (ibid: 15, original emphasis). It is clear from this list that the institute has already decided on its epistemological and ontological horizon; one gets the feeling that a philosopher – certainly of the continental variety – would be shot upon entry to the Earth Institute. History it seems has been a false struggle of appearances to unveil the unquestionable sovereign Good of liberal capitalism and the economic subject.

Moreover, Sachs states that ‘reality’ has undergone such a change over the past 200 years that those of the humanities have not been able to keep up with contemporary social conditions. In a statement that embodies, more than anything, Sachs frustration with the human condition, he states that because of changes in reality ‘our social philosophies…consistently lag behind present realities’ (ibid:3). No wonder they have not received an invitation to the institute; philosophers theorists and political types have yet to even receive the message – the Truth has finally arrived and Sachs holds it. As such the solutions to that which plagues humanity are straight forward. Now that Sachs has identified the problems – population growth, extreme poverty and climate change – what is required is a global acknowledgement of this Truth and the rational deployment of new technologies. In order to do so, a new approach to global problem solving based upon cooperation and new forms of trans-national governance is required. Sachs suggests that today, now that the problem and the scientific response is clear, all that is required is greater ‘political will’ and a new era of peace, prosperity and global cooperation can begin. As Sachs states; ‘The main problem, I shall suggest time and time again, is not the absence of reasonable and low-cost solutions, but the difficulty of implementing global cooperation to put those solutions in place’(ibid: 12).

It is this point – global governance – that is the exception to the set; the other elements being climate change, population growth and extreme poverty. Governance is the element that constitutes the grouping – without accomplishing this goal, all others prove impossible – yet it is the point around which Sachs’ programme fails. As shall be developed throughout the remainder of this thesis, it is this constitute exception that represents the Truth of any given structural articulation. This is the fundamental wager of both Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marxism – certainly under Slavoj Zizek’s reading – that the symptomatic exception within any set is not a temporary aberration but rather represents the hidden Truth. This distinction results in a vitally different political positions. While Sachs attempts to reform global governance under capitalism, Zizek considers such a move impossible. We shall build on this philosophical debate in significant detail in Chapters Two and Three.

Sachs relies on the reformulation of global cooperation in order to remain optimistic in the face of such a damaging conception of planetary affairs. Cooperation is, in psychoanalytic terms, a fetish through which a cynical ideological fantasy is allowed to function. Sachs supplements his fetish for global cooperation with another; technology. In terms of technology, the ‘reasonable and low-cost solutions’ Sachs proposes are a wholly insufficient response to the goals set in the Millennium Project, as will be expanded upon in the next section.

Sachs’ blind reliance upon technology is part of a larger trend, the scientific hegemony of global problem solving. Science itself has a role to play in both the reduction of poverty and in managing environment change, but it does not consider the structuration of its own understanding; science has become blind to its own history and the historical contingency of its development. This has led to a situation where the status of global politics is considered as either moral or scientific, never human in the sense of being political. Instead the position of both science and global capitalism is held to be transcendental. Both social theory and politics are foreclosed from the debate – with the result that not only do we not look outside of current understanding for solutions but human behaviour is implicitly considered to be fundamentally malleable. Conversely, as literary theorist Terry Eagleton argues, human behaviour has proven much more difficult to mould than physical matter; mountains can be destroyed more easily than racism (2003: 50). It is much easier to destroy a nation with bombs than build one against its history.

Technology as Messiah

The central tenet of the mainstream Green movement – embodied in Sachs work – is that improvements in energy and resource efficiency, both in terms of production and consumption, will be sufficient to halt global climate change. It is technological change that is behind international agreements such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and discussions at the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference . Sachs considers that the global economy is able to mediate against the contradiction between economic growth and environmental collapse by the use of technology. Based on this assumption, one-off increases in resource efficiency produce the change required to hold-off environmental collapse. Efficiency increases, however, only ever take the edge off increases in overall economic output. Sachs himself illustrates this point in regards to electricity efficiency stating that given global economic output is predicted to rise six fold in the years to 2050, even a doubling of efficiency would lead to a tripling of electricity use (2008: 98).

The reliance upon technology discounts what is known as ‘Jevons paradox’. First suggested by William Stanley Jevons in relation to Coal consumption in Britain (Jevons, 1866), the paradox suggests that increases in efficiency tend to produce an increase in the demand for the resource. As the resource becomes cheaper, consumption tends to rise. As a consequence, technological advancements do not tend to reduce environmental degradation (Foster, 2000: 4).

John Bellamy Foster gives increases in automobile efficiency as an example of Jevons paradox in action. Increases in efficiency in the automobile industry in the United States in the 1970s did not reduce the amount of fuel consumed, as the number of vehicles on the road doubled as driving became more affordable (ibid:5). Certainly this ‘law’ only holds according to the logic of neoclassical economics; t needs to be viewed critically and does not apply uniformly. In particular, government mandated efficiency standards tend to increase costs, thus not increasing demand and consumption.

Nevertheless, it is worth considering that technology is not a total solution – it cannot be assumed that technological prowess will prevent expansion in economic activity from expanding environmental effects. Technology may expand the range of resources available but cannot do so infinitely. Moreover technological innovation does not automatically reduce resource consumption. In fairness to Sachs, he acknowledges that the market does not automatically encourage the development and use of technologies that induce sustainability. Nonetheless, he still holds that technology is a vital cog in sustainability.

Perhaps the over-riding point is that capitalism is not an efficient system for the use of resources, as it is assumed to be by its ideologues. Capitalism is based not on production to service human ‘needs’ but rather continuous accumulation and growth; the drive of capital is profit for the sake only of profit itself. In this manner the central environmental concern in regards to capitalism should not be technology and efficiency, but a reduction in the general level of production and consumption. Because capitalism is constituted by its own self-revolution and growth, any reduction in economic output sends capital into crisis, further restricting the ‘trickle down’ to those beyond the development ladder.

Thus while the Green demand for reducing the scale of economic activity is a step in the right direction – certainly Western levels of consumption must be reduced in order to halt global environmental collapse and allow the masses to come out of poverty – this move would be disastrous for the hungry populations of the world within the limitations imposed by capitalism. Despite the locally based poverty reduction efforts of trans-governmental agencies such as the United Nations and the World Bank, genuine resolution of poverty can only result within the capitalist ‘development ladder’.

That is, for the world’s poorest citizens to bring their standard of living out of extreme poverty, the wealthiest would have had to experience equally large, or larger, economic growth. Sachs speaks to this point in a sheepish manner. He holds strongly to the idea of an economic ‘ladder’ but does not speak to the inherent inequality in this metaphor nor the consequential increases in economic activity required for the economic ladder to rise. Ultimately, Sachs’ work is a pragmatic, conservative, discourse. It simply excepts the structure of contemporary circumstances without any reference to history. Sachs, as an illustration, considers sweatshops to be a positive development[v]. Certainly they are a step up the development ladder for some but Sachs never comes to question the requirement for the constituent inequality the ladder requires[MU1] .

Thus reductions in poverty, without wide-ranging economic change, would not result in reductions in inequality. Rather, inequality is widely acknowledged as a necessary element of the efficient operation of capitalism. Inequality may be reduced – such as through locally orientated poverty reduction efforts – but it will remain in substantial form. The logical result of this inequality is that in order to reduce the suffering of the world’s poorest, the global economy has to grow substantially. Neither Sachs, nor any other apologist for capitalism, is calling for a reduction in inequality – the ‘ladder’ metaphor remains dominant – bringing people out of poverty requires a mass ‘rising of the tide’, to suggest an unfortunate alternative metaphor.

For this reason, demands from Green discourse and in particular the ‘Affluenza’ movement (see Galbraith, 1958; Hamilton, 2003) to reduce levels of consumption – such as ‘buy nothing day’ – are ill-conceived. What these demands ignore is that reductions in Western consumption will necessarily lead to decreases in economic growth. Within the capitalist matrix, these reductions can only lead to further punishment for the poor. The ultimate consequence of a reduction of Western demand for consumer items is the reduction in the production of these items in the Third World, a decrease which results in unemployment and further suffering for the hungry masses.

Here lies the fundamental material contradiction of capitalism and Sachs’ approach. The environmental capacity of the Earth simply cannot support the scale of development required to induce a substantial reduction in poverty, even with a significant increase in technological efficiency. Indeed, even without any efforts to reduce poverty, economic growth in the global West is unsustainable. The 2008 WWF ‘Living Planet’ report suggests in 2005 the global ecological footprint (the biological capacity required for the material reproduction of society) was 30% higher than supply. The United States footprint-per-capita was four times that of that global supply. Likewise, ‘clean, green’ New Zealand’s footprint was approximately three times that which is currently sustainable, suggesting that if all the citizens of the world lived like New Zealanders – a nation apparently in immediate need of economic growth – another three planets would be required (WWF, 2008: 14-15). Clearly these ecological footprints cannot be sustainable, nor allowed to expand. Increasingly open battles for resources are being witnessed on a global scale and ultimately, in the competition for scarce resources, it is the rich and powerful who will win (see Klare, 2001).

This operation is compounded by the second ‘sustainability’ factor preventing the emancipation of the world’s hungry; the exponential growth of the world’s population[MU2] . The 2009 United Nations Population report(2009b) predicts the world’s population will increase 37% to 9.2 Billion by 2050, 85% of which growth will reside in regions currently classified as ‘less developed’ – by 2050 86% of the global population is predicted to live in these areas. These population pressures bring back the ghost of Thomas Malthus, once banished by the hope of technology. Malthus argued that population pressures on resources were the primary cause of hunger; with various ‘positive checks’ alleviating the pressure. Writing in 1798, his motive here was political; the defence of private property in the face of the French revolution (Ross, 1998: 8). Malthus considered there to be no point in social welfare, as the increased demand for food would only increase the misery of the poor. Indeed, Eric Ross (ibid: 22) quotes Malthus as stating[MU3] ;

‘ a man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on who he has just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is[vi]‘.

Malthus considered poverty to be a natural occurrence, created because population growth was higher than food production; gains in productivity would be eroded by population growth (Sachs, 2008:78). What Malthus did not consider, however, was increases in technological efficiency which produced more food per head of population, and restrictions on population growth primarily through contraception.

For many, this debate was decided by the progress made by the Green Revolution in the 1970s. For this reason, Sachs, whilst acknowledging the return of Malthus’ presence, ultimately rejects his work because of these inadequacies. Yet, as the possibility of the total exploitation of global resources becomes a possibility and yet global population rates continue to increase, now is not a time to forget Malthus’ warning, although we may do well to reject his conservative politics. Indeed, these politics – once dismissed by the light of modernism – may also return in the case of quasi-apocalyptic collapse. Perhaps we do not have to go that far. As surplus populations increasingly develop in less fortunate areas of the world and Western nations increasingly look to obtain resources from lands other than their own – China’s purchasing of large plots of land in Africa in order to grow crops for domestic purposes is an example – population pressure upon resources appears to be the most apparent source of misery.

It is this contradiction between the economic growth required to alleviate poverty and the demands of the planet which is disavowed in mainstream environmental discourse. Sachs believes he can do so, but only on the basis of his fetishes, technology – which has just been examined – and global cooperation, otherwise known as ‘political will’. It is to this point that we shall now turn.

Global Cooperation as Political Will

The lack of ‘political will’ Sachs laments is a symptom of the impossibility of achieving a globally sustainable world without a radical systematic change. Sachs envisages a world in which global cooperation is dominant, rather than the vested interests of nation states. The reformation of sovereignty includes a renewing of the relationship between private business, civil society and elected governments. Crucially, Sachs believes governments – often through international agreements – can make sustainability more profitable (Sachs, 2008: 51-52).

What he has been unable to acknowledge is that new forms of global cooperation have been emerging; the nation state is not the sole source of governance or authority. The changing nature of capitalist sovereignty is reflected in the movement from a disciplinary society to a society of control, where power is directly bio-power, internalised into the body as the whole of social life comes to be administered in what is known as the ‘panoptican affect’ (Hardt & Negri, 2000; 23-24). Such a change has been constructed and analysed firstly by Michel Foucault and then Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, amongst others. We shall focus on the work of the latter theorists in significant detail in the latter chapters of this thesis. At this stage it is enough to not that changes in the form of global governance have recently occurred but not in the manner in which Sachs envisages.

Instead of a single entity controlling power, sovereignty is rather constructed via the processes of capitalism. Whilst we can acknowledge an influential structure of governing organisations, including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods financial instruments, regional trade organisations and agreements and the easily forgotten nation-state itself (as well as more local forms of sovereignty within the state), the dominant form of sovereignty is what Hardt Negri label ‘ether’ (2000; 346); the reproduction of shared social life (in the name of profit) by immaterial labour through cooperation and communication.

Governmental organisations certainly exist, but their role is one of control, not guarantee; they provide the administrative support for the deployment of the institutions of the biopolitical society that is Empire. Governments have become little more than instruments for the measurement of the flows of commodities and population they are charged with administrating in the name of capital (Hardt and Negri, 2000; 31). Beyond the representatives of government, the institutions of our bio-political society include the vast array of monitoring devices evident in our societies, from the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, online ‘research’ and the more Orwellian ‘anti-terrorism’ acts passed in the post 9/11 world. More pertinently for HN, the biopolitics of Empire are produced and reproduced by the immaterial labour which dominates postmodern capitalism. These industries, characterised by communication and cooperation implicitly reproduce the sovereignty of Empire through the production, and control of knowledge and ideas. The imposition of this power goes by unnoticed serving as it does at our pleasure but for their profit.

Sachs considers none of these developments; neither does he come to question why the new forms of sovereignty and global cooperation that he envisages have not developed. He has not done so because his work features no conception of capitalism as a political structure nor of the political nature of human being. Capitalism is simply conceived as economics; any non-capitalist form is considered a distortion of the Truth of capitalism. Socialist economics is like vegetarian steak; it simply misses the point. If Sachs did stop to critically consider the structure of capitalism he might be able to see that poverty has been a constitute feature of global capitalism, rather than a contingent aberration caused by the faulty application of market forces. Moreover, global political governance is not an altrusive exercise but rather a defence of the profit motive.

If we consider a Marxist approach – an approach not available to Sachs who misreads Marxism[vii] to the extent that ‘reading’ appears far-fetched[viii] – we can productivity consider that the hungry of the world are not just a step away from the development ladder, but rather constitutive of the ladder itself; a surplus population, the poorest of the poor are those who maintain what apologists label the global ‘development ladder’ by anchoring the wage labour system. It is this population that is the ultimate symptom of the failure of capitalism and Sachs approach to global sustainability. As such, surplus labour is the pivotal point in our argument.

Surplus Labour

Sachs forecloses from his analysis the question of class, or more pertinently, class exploitation. For Marx, exploitation occurs because of the structural relationship between capital and labour, embodied in the wage-labour system. This structure can only operate under the conditions of an excessive over-supply of workers. That is, capitalism operates as a system of private property where the vast majority are not able to own any and thus without property – without the means to materially reproduce their own conditions of living – are forced to sell their labour power (Wood, 2004: 246). As Eagleton (2003:42) reminds us, the pre-Marxist conception of the proletariat was those who were too poor to own property so served the state by way of producing children to add to the labour force. The proletariat are ‘those who have nothing to give but their bodies[CWM4] ’. Indeed, the worker generally benefits more from employment that the capitalist; within capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited (Robinson in Munck, 2000: 142)[CWM5] .Where the worker risks starvation, and ultimately death, the capitalist is set to lose only a small amount of profit and can easily replace the worker (Wood, 2004: 135-136).

In order for the capitalist wage-labour system to operate, an excess of workers must exist, such that the threat of losing one’s job remains; without the existence of a minimum wage, wages prices are driven down by the excess of willing workers. It is these excess workers – the hungry – at the sharp end of capitalism who are the true motor of capitalism. It is this surplus labour that Sachs simply cannot acknowledge; progress up the development ladder is not infinitely possible but rather the notion of the ladder itself is only established by the presence of those who cannot make it onto the first rung. The crucial question – one that is at the heart of this thesis – is the relationship between this extreme poverty and capitalism. It is a question of the nature of exclusion.

Sachs, particularly in his previous work (2005a), is explicitly concerned with the plight of the most materially deprived. This population, however, is not a part of capitalism. Instead, Sachs conceives extreme poverty to be caused by exclusion from capitalism. In line with the strictly analytic philosophical logic which informs his work, Sachs argues that because wealthy Western nations have followed a market logic, the same logic will apply to all nations. That capitalism could be responsible for both corpulent wealth and miserable poverty is not a conclusion available to Sachs.

That, however, is the exactly the conclusion taken here. Following the brief Marxist analysis suggested above, poverty is considered to be caused by market relations. The labouring – or unwanted labouring – populations of the world are not strictly excluded from capitalism. Rather they constitute the wage-labour system. Nonetheless, this necessary positioning cannot be acknowledged within the fantasmatic ideology of justice that informs the Western world. Such a recognition – that Western wealth is openly constituted upon the exploitation, suffering and horrifically slow and regular death of those whose labour is considered to be surplus – is too traumatic a conclusion to be reached for the delicate, if cynical, sensibilities of the post-enlightenment subject. Surplus labour thus speaks to an interesting sense of exclusion, one that we shall consider to be best understood by a psychoanalytic discourse and in particular the Lacanian term, extimacy and Zizekian conception of universality.

Surplus labour is the principle symptomatic contradiction of global capitalism. This contradiction has been keep at bay by way of various ideological displacements which either seek to position absolute global poverty as a contingent aberration caused by faulty application of market principles or a local error produced by corrupt individuals or lazy governance. Along with mediating charitable endeavours, the contradiction between wealth and poverty within our increasingly ‘globalised’ society has been kept from the developed mind by geographical distance.

Globally the working class has been subject to a large geographical shift whereby 80% of what could be regarded as the Marxist Proletariat now exists outside of Western nations (Davis, 2006: 13). As a corollary, Western multi-nationals have moved their production operations to countries whose labour force had previously been regarded as outside of the capitalist economy, relocating in search of reduced costs, lower wages and more relaxed labour laws. This move has produced an ideological split within capitalism. Much has been made of the move to a different stage of capitalism, from an industrial to a post-industrial society, characterised by branding, consumerism and finance capital. Conversely, the working class has not disappeared; it has been displaced outside of the Western gaze.

It is also worth considering the current capitalist dynamic that is creating a ‘Third-world’ underclass within developed western countries, particularly nations that have installed neo-liberal economic policies[ix]. Such a dynamic has been explored in detail in developing countries. Here the economies of Brazil, China and India are developing rapidly, but this development is subject to substantial income inequality (Guanghua, 2008; Heshmatic, 2007). While this inequality was already stark, particularly in Brazil and India, differences are becoming more noticeable, such that there can be described the development of a ‘China A’ that is the subject of capitalist reforms, and China B, which is largely suffering for those reforms.

Such inequality is generally been approached with western disdain, predominately framed in terms of ‘human-rights’ violations or a failure of welfare systems or development assistance[CWM6] . However, the same trend of increasing inequality can also be observed in many of the wealthiest nations. The United States is the strongest such example. Here poverty, particularly if measured in terms of health and education standards rather than consumed calories, is reaching Third World levels. The United States is currently ranked 34^th in terms of infant mortality and a 30-year life expectancy gap exists between the richest and poorest states (Burd-Sharps, Lewis, & Borges Martins, 2008). In these nations the underclass, as an excess of workers, is strictly not required because of minimum wage laws and the exportation of the manufacturing industries to lower wage economies.

The exportation of capital to the developing world has generated large pockets of surplus labour located in urban slums. This development has occurred following what might be turned the second expansion of capitalism – the first occurring through the colonisation achieved by European empires – occurred via the ‘soft’ colonisation of the Bretton Woods institutions, the IMF and the World Bank. Although established soon after the Second World War, these institutions only turned their interest to the Third World in the mid-late 1970s[x]. During this time World Bank ‘urban lending’ increased from US$10 million in 1972 to US$2 billion in 1988 (Davis, 2006: 70). The results of these Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have been mixed in the extreme. Some regions have experienced remarkable economic growth, growth which has brought millions out of poverty. At the same time, however, even within these high-growth nations, inequality and suffering has become more extreme. India, for example, one of the shinning lights of the SAPs, achieved 6% growth throughout the 1990s, yet the poor are experiencing arguably the worst conditions since independence, with 56 million new paupers of the streets (ibid: 171).

In effect, the second generation of the exportation of capitalism – colonisation having already brought a massively vulnerable population into the global economy – operated as a living museum for Victorian-era capitalism. Sweatshops and child labour and the excluded masses did not disappear, they were transferred to the Third World. If this is Sachs point – that every economy must go through this stage – than unfortunately, however, no further exportation of the capitalist workforce is possible. Sweatshops and sweatshop equivalents, whether the ‘Export-Processing Zones’ of developing economies or fruit picking labourers in the United States can only exist because of the excess of labour which forces workers to take jobs in these conditions. Not all can be included in the wage-labour system; an excess is required. Capitalism requires both a subjugated workforce and an excluded reserve army of labour in order to function and there is nowhere else for them to go, except further away from the Western eye.

Contrary to Sachs’ contention that it is only when agricultural surpluses are high that urban populations develop (2008:26), these slums are, in the terms of Mike Davis a ‘surplus-humanity’; built not from economic opportunity but rather a lack of it. The most edifying image of this excess humanity is the ‘City of the Dead’, the slum dwellers who have made their home within the tombs of Cairo. This surplus population, what Manual Castells has labelled the ‘fourth world[MU7] ’, has developed with the mass urbanisation of the poor, which has been, unlike previous urbanisations, decoupled from industrialisation. Instead, in a condition in which the CIA reports that a full 1/3 of the world’s workforce was unemployed in the 1990s, a massive informal economy has developed that does not create jobs, but rather subdivides existing opportunities. Such a competitive environment robs the poor of the community bonds that often hold together the poor, creating Darwinesque competition that threatens to devolve into a Hobbessian hell.

The nexus of these developments is the question of illegal immigration. The central geographical centres of the Western world – Europe, North America and Australasia – are increasingly plagued by difficulties caused by illegal immigration. In each region the question is different. Europe has inadvertently encouraged the move as the creation of the European Union and in particular the admission of poorer Eastern European states has allowed for the free movement of labour across the continent. Moreover, the development of massive urban slums along the North-Western coast line of Africa has made (illegal) immigration into Southern Europe an increasingly appealing prospect.

North America too faces a longstanding battle to define who has the rights to citizenship as illegal immigrants attempt to enter the land of the free from Central America and the Caribbean. These ‘aliens’ have become an established sector of the American population, blending in with a healthy legal immigrant population. Indeed, Alien labour forms the background of the United States economy as they supply domestic labour at Third World rates, allowing the US agricultural industry[xi] to compete globally. Alien labour also proliferates through the low-skilled service industry.

Australasia, particularly Australia but also New Zealand[xii], is beginning to experience its own issues with illegal migration. Australia, certainly since World War II, has benefited from large immigrant populations from the Mediterranean. Increasingly, however, immigrants have attempted to illegally enter Australia from South-Eastern Asia, in particular from Indonesia. Making the treacherous open ocean journey, these ‘boat people’ have made for much consideration in Australia, as they were first tragically turned away and then with a change of government ushered to off-shore Islands for ‘processing’ of a troublingly Orwellian variety.

With the dilemmas of illegal immigration, as the 3^rd World comes to the West, we can clearly see the contradictions of capitalism and surplus labour. Add to this the cultural anxiety which comes with the obdurate presence of the Other and illegal immigration becomes the hotspot for the disavowed foundations of capitalism to meet their maker. How this might occur – disrupting capitalism to the point that its automatic functioning is no longer operative – will be the focus of the latter sections of the thesis. For now, however, it is enough to establish that capitalism requires a surplus of labour which is excluded both socially and economically even whilst being simultaneously necessary. From this analysis we can then see that inequality is not an innocent consequence of the capitalist empire but in a large degree an active creation of that empire.

At this point in our introductory treatise we have established the problem to which this thesis is directed – that of global sustainability – suggesting that Sachs has correctly identified the shape and structure of the problematic – the scale of economic activity as determined by population and economic growth, causing unsustainable pressure upon the environment. Yet we have had cause to reject Sachs twin fetishes for technology and global co-operation, firstly through an immanently critique but most powerfully by reference to the pivotal contradiction of global capitalism; surplus labour. Poverty and climate change cannot be solved within capitalism, rather surplus labour and the economic growth which is the central cause of environmental degradation are constitutive elements of capitalism. For this reason, any attempt to seriously respond to the challenge of global sustainability must begin to think beyond the horizon of capital.

Yet, Sachs’ work should not simply be dismissed. Certainly his use of science to exemplify the problems facing humanity in the 21^st century is first-class. This thesis has begun with his work not because it embodies the worst of the apologists for capitalism but the best. The ends to which his works moves are noble in the strongest sense of the term. If there is to be any sense of justice, of humans as ‘good’ animals, we need a globally sustainable society in which the evils of material deprivation are no longer prevalent. This may not be a utopian society but it does require a utopian demand for change.

Sachs is unable to conceive of either sense of utopia; radical change in the name of global sustainability. Instead he favours pragmatic and incremental solutions to problems which are beyond partial measures. Yes, we might agree with several of his solutions. Global mechanisms of co-operation are certainly to be encouraged – although we need to consider the manner in which capitalism is generating new forms of sovereignty and governance quite divorced from the material problematic that concerns Sachs – as is the development of infrastructure and educational capabilities in the poorer regions of the world. Undoubtedly, for the global economy to operate sustainably within the limitations of the planet, new forms of technology are required if large portions of humanity are going to rise out of the most extreme poverty. We should not stop recycling because it is not the ultimate cure, although we would do well to understand the ideological side effects of this behaviour[xiii]. Moreover, reductions in population growth are perhaps the most straight forward solution to this problematic. When it comes to building a just society, change will be material, patient and pragmatic – there is no utopian wand could renew the world in seven days. The problem is not with the solutions, it is with the horizon under which they are enacted, a horizon which means these solutions will not change anything.

Ultimately, what Sachs forecloses upon is the element of politics in any sense of the economy. Sachs, like so many American theorists, is of the pragmatic variety. As Eagleton suggests, however, today it is ‘hard nosed pragmatists who are the dewy-eyed dreams, not the wild-haired leftists. They are really just sentimentalists of the status quo’ (Eagleton, 2003: 180).

What Sachs’ conceptual fetishes foreclose upon is the element of politics. He brings together economy in terms of his first three goals[CWM8] and politics in the last but is constitutively unable to bring the two together into a critical conception of political economy. For Sachs everything must change except the horizon under which these problems have been generated, primarily because Sachs is unable to conceive of the existence of any horizon, an act which would require an acknowledgement of history and the political constitution of human being.

Politics and the Political

Against Sachs, this thesis argues that today what is required is a return to history, a fundamental questioning of the horizon of global capitalism and a consideration of the political foundations of politics. This call does not arise abstractly but rather from the circumstances in which we find ourselves. It is largely because our current conception of the material contradictions facing humanity are inadequate that we simply have no way of responding adequately to the challenges of global sustainability within the current horizon. It is this very impossibility of action which urges us to imagine a new world. This thesis resolves itself to consider the circumstances under which a new world might not only be imagined but come into being through a rehabilitation of the political dimension that Sachs disavows.

We may suggest that Sachs is to be admired because he cogently and subtly identifies the problematic that defines global sustainability, we must forcefully disagree with the form that his (political) approach takes. As such, the task of this thesis is not to take issue with the science of global sustainability, nor to construct more feasible policy responses. This is not a ‘How to improve the world one day at a time’ style guide. Instead, our task is to examine how, or rather what it means, to respond to the question of global sustainability under the reign of 21^st century capitalism.

This is not to suggest that our response will not be positioned, or is entirely in the abstract. It starts with a number of assumptions. Firstly that problems associated with the creation of a genuinely just and reproducible global economy are real and worth responding to. Secondly, as established above, there is no possible solution within capitalism. Instead the problems to which we respond, in particular economic growth and poverty, are constitutive of capitalism. On the other hand, if our response must be other than capitalism, the Left is bereft of ideas – Margaret Thatcher was right, there is no alternative. We cannot innocently reoccupy a old-style essentialism that once characterised Leftist radicalism. Nor is the ‘beautiful soul’ global ignorance of the modernist identity politics or contingency of the postmodern Left of any virtue in responding to our problematic.

Instead we must begin to thread new paths without throwing out the traditions of the old; we must learn to use old tools in new ways. As such, this thesis, will bring back the proper dimension of political economy but not in the sense of any alternative empirical proposal; there will be no more statistics in this text. As such, in rejecting Sachs, we have converted a practical, material, problem in a theoretical one. The exigencies of natural science are replaced by the troubles of Western Marxism. Rather through the re-development of a critical Marxism that acts as a return to the political through theory and the struggle of history. What we need now is not a rush to activity, frantically attempting to save the hand that holds us down but rather a fundamental reconsideration of our horizon and the opportunities for radical action within it. In this thesis I seek to identify a new way of thinking about these problems through a turn to theory. We do not use theory here in a sense divorced from materiality, but rather, like Marx, as a political force in itself (Eagleton, 1997: 49). This diagnosis, in turn, will generate the possibilities of different responses quite opposed to those suggested by Sachs. It is, in a sense, the return the repressed of capitalism; the return of political economy.

Returning to Marxism

Today, what is required is a restoration of the dimension of history. It is to de-naturalise capitalism and its political supplement, liberal democracy. The reign of capitalism has created a circumstance in which the majority of the world are materially deprived yet the planet itself is being put under increasing pressure because of global over-consumption. Despite the increasingly apparent material contractions of global capitalism, as well as the breakdown of scarcity through the digitalisation of intellectual private property and the destabilising of existing forms of political authority, the political Left remains impotent. At best it offers a softening of the injustices of capitalism. If ‘What is to be done?’ was the proto-typical Leftist question, at least for those able to bear the presence of Lenin, today those who cannot are reduced to asking ‘How can we help?’

The Left appears to have no response to the contradictions of capitalist political economy primarily because it has lost sight of either political economy or the economy in general. The 20^th century witnessed first the theoretical defeat of Marxism as capitalism continued to flourish in its ominous manner and then its political fall as actually-existing socialist movements fell at the end of the century. This defeat saw the development of a culturalist hegemony that at first sought to expand Marxism’s explanatory appeal and ended up dismissing the idea of emancipation entirely.

At its core, Marxism expresses a concern for the dispossessed and wretched of this earth. Moreover, it provides a critical explanation of the cause of this suffering beyond mere aberration, meta-physical theism or personal failings. For this reason, in responding to the plight of those whose labour power is structurally excessive and the considerations of an environmentally sustainable economy, it is to Marxist discourse that we turn.

Marxism, however, as a political cause well divorced from Marx himself, has largely been defeated as a political movement. Moreover, Marxist thought has been threatened and over-run by an ontology which suggests that language – the signifier – constructs our access to ‘reality’. Indeed, this reality is language itself – the extent to which a ‘Real’ exists outside of language becomes the source of debate.

Beyond mere academic quibbling, this move has had overwhelming consequences for Marxism and politics in regards to the dispossessed. If language is purely referential – it is not tied to an anchor which would fix meaning in some transcendental sense – then the range of possible explanations of our social world change. No longer can we rely upon descriptions of social performance which depend upon essentialist or deterministic readings of causality, at least in the same innocent sense in which they were once thrown about. If the determinism evident in the historical materialist conception of the predestined progress of the mode of production was no longer valid, it was unclear what would take its place, both in regards to the description of the economy and the prescription of what would follow. This prescription included the method of transition from capitalism and the form of society to follow.

Moreover, as global capitalism spread, becoming the disavowed background of all social life, totalising expressions were entirely unnecessary. In a world in which the catch-cry of rebellious youth remains ‘whatever’, the only transcendentalism required is the assumed solidity of the existing. For those who cannot find certainty in this ignorance, it is religion rather than political essentialism, that provides the necessary suture.

Moreover, if morality was not held absolutely, then the door to relativity was ominously held open. Without a transcendental signifier that provide the basis for normativity there appeared to be little reason for anything other than an nihilistic ethics of contingency. Marxism, certainly in its political application, came to appear entirely ideological – an explanation which seemed to account for its historical failings. The class narrative and communism itself were no longer justified by history but rather only through the violent exclusion of dissenters. Western Marxism then became a search for alternative foundation or reading of foundationalism, beyond the signifier[xiv]. With this turn, however, came postmodernity and an eventual celebration of the very ethical contingency the rethinking of Marxism had sought to avoid.

This problem, as Sharpe (2004: 11) describes, involves an interaction between a prescriptive and descriptive element. Western Marxism, apropos critical theory, has been largely formulated as an attempt to understand both the continuation and expansion of global capitalism and the failure of political states inspired by Marxism. In this sense, Western Marxism turned to culture and readings of cultural inspired by the turn to language in order to respond to this apparent failure. In doing so, however, Sharpe suggests that the Critical-Western reading of Marxism has devolved into ‘total critique’ by which it has come to understand capitalism in such a way that any possibility for action is dismissed (ibid:12). As part of this process, the political, prescriptive element of Marxism has been largely abandoned. Without a political home to return to, Marxism after the signifier has become decidedly impotent, offering little more than a continual critique of capitalism with only an assumed sense of ethics and politics. If Marxism opposes capitalism on behalf of the worker, without the transcendental anchor provided by historical materialism, it is simultaneously unclear of the ethical basis on which it does so and the political formation which would serve its demands.

In response to the disappointments of Marxism and determinism, the Left has been split – in terms of academia, politics and ideology – between either a non-political economy in which the reform of administrated devices which are assumed to be neutral – Sachs being the primary embodiment of this position[xv] – or a withdrawal from economy altogether, characterised by postmodernity. At best this later form remains within the realm of politics as is the case in some of the more critical forms of late modernity. At worst the withdrawal from the economy leads only to cultural studies, a discipline apparently allergic to any sense of critical judgement. Postmodernity may display a sense of ethics but it is far divorced from the feeble demands of the hungry. It is as if without Marxism, politics nor economy can no longer be held together at the same time; there exists an impossible element whose absent presence prevents a fusion[xvi].

If the Left is to begin to respond to the task of creating a globally sustainable economy than it must begin to return to the question of economy and Marxism. It cannot return innocently, however. Past alternative essentialist attempts to grasp the ‘Truth’ – communism, socialist and facist – based around a utopian fantasy resulted in a deplorable exclusionary violence in the name of purity; a violence arguably worse[CWM9] than that experienced today in global capitalism.

As a reaction to this explosive failure, the Left became dominated by a re-reading of Marxism which sought both to avoid these excesses and restore its explanatory insights in light of the persistence of capitalism and saw a turn to culture and eventually the question of language. This integration of Marxism and continental philosophy has led to some interesting theoretical reflections but a poverty of politics. Most particularly it has changed our understanding of what it means to do politics – a philosophical reflection upon the politics of the political rather than any direct intervention on the streets.

This loss has come through a turn to culture, rather than economy, as an explanatory force. Ultimately it led to the primacy of the signifier and the postmodern turn. What began as an innocent attempt to rethink Marxism and ended up with the politics of Warhol – meant that both the essentialism of the Marxist class narrative, along with its offer of emancipation were no longer viable. Lessons were learned, but the focus on particularly is embarrassingly inappropriate in an era of the ‘Star Wars’ defence system, mass famine and Rodeo drive. Dadaism has little say about the hungry, except as a perverse object of art.

The wilting of the Marxist influence has left capitalism as the only viable form and interpretation of political economy. Through the critique of the essentialist leanings of traditional Marxism, the Left has withdrawn from the economic altogether, as if the only way one could conceive of economic analysis was through an essentialist lens. Moreover, without the political essentialism that characterised the Marxism project, the idea of Left emancipatory politics has become homeless. Those who still cling to such an ideal are either sad veterans unable to keep up with the times or idealistic lunatics. Nonetheless, as Ronaldo Munck (2000:142) suggests, ‘even though traditional communism has failed, the conditions that gave rise to it still exist and its task in seeking a more just and equitable world is only just beginning’.

Although not articulated in these turns, against postmodern plurality, a number of theorists have attempted to reconsider the prospects of universality and Truth in relation to Marxism after the turn to language. The most seminal of these attempts stems from Ernesto Laclau, initially in conjunction with Chantal Mouffe. In their breakthrough text Hegemony and Socialist Strategy[CWM10] , Laclau and Mouffe attempt to re-read Marxism and socialism ‘beyond the positivity of the social’ and the turn to language. Here all links to essentialism are dropped – accept to the primacy of language – as Marxism becomes little more than an interpretative tradition. Nonetheless, by returning to the question of universality against the particularism of the ‘new social movements’, Laclau and Mouffe’s work remains a decisive theoretical event.

This new, post-Marxist, horizon came at a cost as the materialist politics of class struggle were dropped in favour of the contingency of hegemony and the battle to hold the empty place of the democratic signifier. Whilst Laclau and Mouffe’s work proved to be a significant advance over previously forms of Marxism because they restoration of universality[xvii] it banished both the question of materialism and class struggle in favour of contingency and democracy. Whilst the title of the text suggested a revival of socialism, it was democracy that held the transcendental position for Laclau and Mouffe.

This thesis builds on the same question as that which troubled Laclau and Mouffe; the prospects for Marxism after the turn to language. Conversely, in responding to the sustainability problematic mapped out thus far, the thesis has cause to diverge from Laclau and Mouffe’s project in a number of important respects[xviii]. Firstly, it turns to psychoanalysis as an explanatory device, arguing that Laclau’s discourse theory does not adequately explain the fixity of language. By reference to psychoanalysis – embodying the discursive turn as symbolic castration rather than differential contingency – and in particular the categories of jouissance and the Real, we are better positioned to understand the appeal of capitalism and the difficulty in causing a fatal disruption to its operation. Moreover, we seek to return back to the economy and the question of class struggle. This turn is entirely situated by the positioning of the thesis against the problem of global sustainability; it order to contend with these issues, we must consider the nature of exploitation and the structure of the economy. Here, democracy becomes little more than an ideological substitute to the logic of capital.

As such, our return materiality and class struggle to Marxism, is informed by Žižek rather than Laclau. This response – as will evolve from our construction of Žižek’s work throughout the project – is not prescriptive but rather challenges our conception of the kind of politics that can be considered to be a response to global sustainability; Žižek provides a reading of Marxism without becoming a Marxist discourse.

What has been required is a restoration of the critical and emanicipatory edge of Marxist theory, along with the rethinking of the notion of universality. Will we soon come to suggest that psychoanalysis which has been able to get closest to achieving this task particularly through a Zizekian lens. As has been noted, however, adopting Žižek’s work against global capitalism and the discourse of the Millennium Goals is not a straightforward decision. Žižek embodies many of the difficulties associated with both Marxism and postmodernity. More salient, however, is his avoidance of the positivism associated with the likes of Sachs and his refusal to implicitly accept the horizon provided by capitalism and liberal democracy. Instead, at a time in which humanity is plagued by horrific problems to which capitalism has no response, Žižek too asks that we must withdraw from activity into a theoretical rethinking of our horizon. In this sense, his work appears to fit in the same category as those readings of Western Marxism which have sought to reengage the descriptive dimension of Marxism without reference to a perspective politics. Indeed, this is the central critique of Žižek’s work – that he produces a reading of capitalism and politics which, whilst intriguing, leads to a political deadlock and ultimate conservatism.

Whilst this positioning has a certain validity – Žižek offers nothing like a restored sense of normativity or party politics which would revive the saliency of Marxist politics – Žižek’s work rethinks the entirely of what it means to practice Marxist politics in the 21^st century. Not only does Žižek reject past Leftist essentialisms and contemporary ethics of contingency associated with the likes of Derrida and Laclau but he refuses to posit any substantive alternative. Although his critics argue that Žižek is not far divorced from conservativism, Žižek comes to argue that his politics are a consequential response to the deadlock of global capitalism and his own positioning as a reader of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Moreover, it appears to ignore Marx’s own silence in regards to politics after capitalism. If Marx was deterministic in regards to the inevitable downfall of capitalism, outside of the pragmatism of The Communist Manifesto, Marx was not at all prescriptive in regards to communism.

Nonetheless, as we shall come to see, Žižek’s commitment to Lacanian theory defines his politics. Psychoanalysis, firstly through Freud and then Lacan, has been a major influence in the turn to culture and language which has redefined Marxism and the Left. In doing so it has come to represent the difficulties with this turn; whilst the Lacanian interpretation of Marxism has come to reinvent its epistemological validity no further sense of politics has developed other than a rejection of the traditions of Marxism.

As such psychoanalytic discourse, has been fraught with discussion around the possibility of developing a form of collective ethics or politics. Whilst these discussions have led to several philosophical advances in politics, or what Glyn Daly (2009) calls the ‘politics of the political’, no stable political frontier has emerged. Moreover, Žižek’s Lacanian reading of the political rejects any possibility of advancing a Lacanian ideal of shared social life; such an ideal stands in contradistinction to Lacan’s own work on ethics.

Instead, what Žižek’s work offers – through a combination of Lacan, Marx and German Idealism – is a critical consideration of the political within 21^st century capitalism. Nonetheless, Žižek’s work does not lend itself to a singular approach. Instead, although in relation to a singular conception of ontology based around the operation of the Lacanian Real, it produces a number of strategic alternatives. It is these alternatives that are the ultimate subject of this thesis as we come to consider the possibility of a radical Leftist response – through a rethinking of Marxism – to the question of global sustainability from within Žižek’s work.

There is no natural politics that stem from Žižek’s work but this does not mean his work is impotent or conservative. Instead, through a strategic approach which seeks to unveil the disavowed foundations of global capitalism – most notably surplus labour – and hold this point in tension with the ideology which excludes it, Žižek’s approach holds open the possibility of disrupting the progress of capitalism. This disruption is not merely critical or negative although it does not seek to produce an alternative horizon for shared social life. Instead, through the inherent impossibility of global capitalism itself, the question of a utopian imaginary, in particular around what Žižek’s calls the ‘Communist Hypothesis’ comes to be rejuvenated. The utopia of the Communist Hypothesis is not a fantasmatic utopia but rather the utopia urge that occurs when we are forced to reimagine a new way of being. That is, if capitalism is unable to integrate surplus labour within its horizon, nor reduce the scale of economic activity, our response should not be formally construct new modes of being but rather insist on the embodied presence of this impossibility in order to force open space for a reinvention of shared social life.

The question of this thesis therefore, can be represented as ‘After the turn to language, in what way can Marxist theory response to the material deprivations and contradictions which are symptomatic of global capitalism?’ In attempting to respond to this question, we shall primarily consider the work of Žižek as a post-Marxist, discussing the role of psychoanalysis in the political through an understanding of Lacanian ethics and its translation in political practice. As such, psychoanalysis shall be analysed as a form of politics, giving consideration to the possibilities of Leftist political practice in the 21^st century.

This[CWM11] task begins with a reconsideration of the losses and gains in Marxism after the signifier. Chapter Two argues that the move which began with a consideration of culture as a supplement to the determinism of Marx’s conception of the economy has ended with a brand of postmodernity which has lost its critical and emancipatory drive. The critique of essentialism and the universality of the grand narrative has been necessary but has robbed Marxism of its ability to respond to the problematic staged by Sachs. Conversely, towards the end of the 20^th century, new thinking emerged around the prospect of an anti-foundationalist politics which was not reduced to the particular. Most prominently, Ernesto Laclau (in initial association with Chantal Mouffe) produced a re-reading of Marxism through the lens of his discourse theory. Laclau’s post-Marxism has become a hegemonic point of analysis, in particular around his conception of radical democracy. Yet, whilst Laclau has been able to productively respond to the problem of Marxist essentialism after the turn to language, this has come at the cost of materialism and the class struggle at the heart of economy.

In Chapter Three, we shall consider how these elements might be restored through a discussion of the foundations of Lacanian psychoanalysis; the dialectics of lack and excess in terms of the Real and jouissance. The purpose of this chapter is to consider the manner in which Lacanian psychoanalysis has produced a response to the turn to language and the challenge of postmodernity. It ends with a discussion of the confluence between psychoanalysis and Marxism in the homology Lacan identified between surplus-jouissance and surplus-value. Such a homology reveals the how Lacanian theory constructs the inadequacies of the traditional Marxist approach to politics yet is unable to produce a politics of its own.

Following the overt rejection of Marxist essentialism, in Chapter Three we commence an exploration into the psychoanalytic approach to the politics. This exploration begins with a critique of psychoanalysis and ethics, from Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents through the changes in Lacan’s conception of an ethical approach. Through this journey, which includes a discussion of Alenka Zupančič’s re-reading of the Kantian categorical imperative, we come to suggest that psychoanalytic ethics falls prey to many of the dilemmas of the practice of postmodern politics, offering little hope for the hungry and in apparent contradiction with the positivist vision of Marxist communism.

Like Marxism, however, psychoanalysis cannot simply be dismissed. In Chapter Four we shall further examine the possibilities of psychoanalytic practice through a discussion of the relationship between (psychoanalytic) ethics and politics. This chapter moves through the work of Laclau and Stavrakakis on radical democracy, rejecting their work on the basis that it is not only a mis-reading of Lacanian theory, but also over-privileges democracy and ethics. Ultimately psychoanalytic politics in this form does not provide a cogent response to Sachs’ problematic because it does not produce a theory of capitalism. Instead we posit that capitalism operates as a form of meta-hegemony, determining in advance the political battles again which Laclau’s notion of hegemony is set. Because of this dominance, any possible political activity within the horizon of capitalism can only reproduce that horizon. Instead, to respond to Sachs’ problematic, what is required is a fundamental rethinking and disruption of this horizon. Politics does not become about competing vision, but on undermining the underlying vision through the eruption of its own internal contradictions. In order to do so we turn to Žižek.

The critique of radical democracy in Chapter Four is framed from a Zizekian perspective. Chapter Four considers the manner in which Žižek has approach politics, in particular his work on Marxism. In Chapter Five we shall consider the various political positions that have emerged through Žižek’s work not as a chronological development, but rather as a number of strategic positions, each with the potential to destabilising existing ideological formations. Critically considering each of these strategies – including the Act, identification with the symptom, traversal of the fantasy, subtractive politics and the practice of concrete universality – in terms of a response to Sachs problematic, it is the practice of concrete universality which proves the most fertile. This strategy – as part of Žižek’s re-reading of universality – is best able to identify and mobilise the disavowed foundations around which global capitalism is founded. Most notably, it is able to restore the dimension of political and class struggle.

The practice of concrete universality, however, remains a negative position, one that is limited to critique. Chapter Six considers whether such a critique provides a more productive response to the dilemmas of the hungry than that proposed by Sachs. In doing so, it questions whether Žižek’s work is limited to this position or allows both the affection identification necessary in the productive and act of radical change, as well as its constitution after the fall. This discussion is framed in terms of the possibilities of formulating a Utopian demand. Although the positivist-fantasmatic sense of utopia is immediately rejected, this cChapter considers a particular kind of utopia to be at the heart of both Lacanian and Marxist practice (bear in mind that Marx thought utopianism to be pure liberal ideology). Through a discussion of Jameson’s Marxism and work of utopianism, Žižek’s notion of the communist hypothesis, combined with the practice of concrete universality in class struggle appears the most productive in the face of the dominance of capitalism. Most importantly it appears to be a feasible and industrious response to Sachs’ problematic.

The question remains, however, whether the Communist Hypothesis can remain confluent with the ethics of psychoanalysis. If the ontological horizon posited by the latter is acknowledge, then this hypothesis – at least in the manner in which it is articulated by Badiou – potentially evokes the theoretical pitfalls that caused the failure and rethinking of Marxism. Chapter Six, therefore, engages in a discussion of the future of psychoanalytic politics after capitalism.

References

Burd-Sharps, S., Lewis, K., & Borges Martins, E. (2008). The Measure of America: American Human Development Report, 2008-2009. New York: Columbia University Press.

Davis, M. (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso.

Eagleton, T. (1997). Marx. London: Phoenix.

Eagleton, T. (2003). After theory / Terry Eagleton. London :: Allen Lane,.

Foster, J. B. (2000). Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis – Is technology the Answer? Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine,, 52(7), 1-13.

Galbraith, J. K. (1958). The Affluent Society. London: Pengiun Books.

Guanghua, W. (Ed.). (2008). Inequality and Growth in Modern China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hamilton, C. (2003). Growth Fetish. Crowns Nest, New South Wales: Allen and Unwin.

Heshmatic, A. (2007). Global Trends in Income Inequality. New York Nova Science Publishers.

Jevons, W. S. (1866). The Coal Question; An Inquiry Concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of Our Coal-Mines. London: Macmillan and Co.

Klare, M. T. (2001). Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Munck, R. (2000). Marxism @ 2000; Late Marxist Perspectives. New York: St.Martin’s Press.

Ross, E. (1998). The Malthus Factor. London: Zed Books.

Sachs, J. (2005a). The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our time. New York: Penguin Press.

Sachs, J. (2005b). Investing in development : a practical plan to achieve the Millennium Development Goals / UN Millennium Project. London ; Sterling, Va.: United Nations Development Programme.

Sachs, J. (2008). Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. New York: Penguin Press.

Sharpe, M. (2004). Slavoj Žižek: A Little Piece of the Real. Aldershot: Ashgate.

United Nations. (2008). The Millennium Development Goals Report 2008. New York: United Nations.

United Nations. (2009a). The Millenium Development Goals Report. New York: United Nations.

United Nations. (2009b). World Population Prospects; The 2008 Revision. New York: United Nations.

Wood, A. W. (2004). Karl Marx (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.

WWF. (2008). Living Planet Report 2008. Switzerland: WWF.

[i] Unsurprisingly, little progress has been made towards these goals (see United Nations, 2009a)

[ii] Sachs is not alone in using the ‘I-PAT’ equation as a device to consider the multiple factors determining environmental degradation.

[iii] Both global poverty and environmental concern have only become strongly identifiable causes after the second World War, the latter becoming marginally hegemonic in the last decades of the Twentieth Century.

[iv] This resistance may be partially diverted in the future as climate change agreements begin to utilise carbon trading schemes which come into agreement with the market and become another opportunity for financial profiteering. Nonetheless, the stumbling point in all ‘mainstream’ climate discussions is the point at which the invisible hand of the market reacts negativity to any proposed change.

[v] Not in the sense of an abstract or transcendental moral good but rather a positive economic development

[vi] We can note that Malthus work – and much of that of his time – does not fit under the wager that constitutes this thesis; that we should be concerned with the plight of the hungry.

[vii] To quote Sachs; ‘Note that the focus on technological improvements is starkly different from the failed Marxist notion that the rich are rich because they successfully exploit the poor. If the rich get rich only because the poor get exploited, then world income would be roughly constant, and all of the economic action would be about the distribution of a given level of economic output. That, indeed, is what Marx had in mind” (2008:206).

[viii] Indeed, Sachs appears entirely reluctant to evoke Marx’s name. He describes Charles Dickens and Friedrich Engels as having best represented the harshness of the first century of industrialisation (Sachs, 2008: 4).

[ix] Neo-liberalism has often become the target of otherwise anti-capitalist critique. Certainly, other, more socially democratic forms of capitalism may domestically mediate more effectively against some of the more damaging elements of capitalism. In terms of global issues, however, such as the hungry or climate change, there is little difference between modalities of capitalism.

[x] At the same time the ‘Green Revolution’ brought technological advances to the third world. Whilst this was ideologically conceived as a means of creating more food, the ultimate result was the creation of a global food system, situating food as a global commodity and securing a food supply for the United States (Ross, 1998:139).

[xi] Along with massive government subsidies

[xii][xii] New Zealand, in particular in its largest city of Auckland, has the biggest Polynesian population in the world. This population developed from government policy in the 1970s which strongly encouraged the importation of cheap Pacific Island labour to supplement New Zealand’s almost fully employed workforce. When the economy started to struggle, however, their labour was no longer in supply and a larger underclass began to develop. This underclass remains today, although Polynesian culture is well integrated within mainstream urban society.

[xiii] We might, for example, conceive recycling as the ultimate capitalist fantasty, an attempt to reintegrate its own remainder

[xiv] As we shall expand upon in the following chapter, the relationship between Marxism and normativity is a difficult one. Whilst Marx held to a deterministic sense of history which assured a communism future, he regarded morality as little more than the ruling ideology. Nonetheless, subsequent applications of Marxism have held to a more normative interpretation of communism.

[xv] Despite the current critique of Sachs as the final apologist for capitalism, he still remains at the forefront of (centre) left discourse.

[xvi] As we shall see latter, Zizek labels this impossibility ‘class struggle’

[xvii] Laclau and Mouffe read the universal not as an a priori essentialism but rather an empty placeholder to be held by any number of competing particular elements in the battle for hegemony. The universal is thus necessary but impossible. This debate shall be taken in significant detail in Chapter Two.

[xviii] As we shall consider in Chapter Four, Laclau himself has diverged from radical democracy in his most recent work in favour of populism

[MU1]More to be said?

[MU2]What was the first?

[MU3]Find original for all these Malthus references

[CWM4]Return to Greek distinction between bios and zoe

[CWM5]Original reference

[CWM6]Reference or quote

[MU7]Find reference

[CWM8]What are these goals?

[CWM9]See Žižek on violence

[CWM10]Reference

[CWM11]Return to these Chapter summaries at the finish

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Tagged Communism, lacan, Marx, Sachs, Zizek

Marxism after the Hegemony of the Signifier

Posted on September 11, 2009 | Leave a comment

Marxism has dominated Leftist political practice since its conception. Today, however, Marxism dominates predominately in its own absence. Marxism has been dealt some traumatic blows, both internal and external, political and theoretical. Most explicitly noticeable has been the fall of ‘actually existing socialism’ following its symbolic death towards the end of the 21^st century. Its actual death coming much earlier. Theoretically the most significant blow has been the associated loss of faith in the essentialist grasp of history and the revolutionary subject. Without the presence of communism, nor the hope of a revolutionary subject which might restore it, Marxism appears as dead as Fukuyama suggested.

Marxism exists only as passing reference to the bad old days of history, or, for some, the good old days of certainty. This break has been both ontological and political. The postmodern turn, with its associated focus on language and particularity has been combined with the actual decline of the working class (at least with the West) and the status of the proletariat. Moreover, the events of 1968 – which simultaneously launched the start of a number of ‘new social movements’ and killed off the hopes of many a revolutionary – and 1989, finally finished off Marxism as a political cause, even if some outposts and out of fashion theorists did not get the message. These events, combined with the ‘turn to language’ that characterised the move towards postmodernity, meant that theorists could no longer speak of class struggle, communism and the revolutionary subject without an ironic smirk.

In this Chapter we shall return the losses and gains for Marxism after its invasion by the signifier. Rejecting the initial positivism of Marxism, we consider the ‘turn to language’ that has called into question that foundational fundamentals of Marxism. This discursive turn begun within Marxism itself as a way of explaining the failure of history and the revolutionary subject. In doing so, Marxist theory moved away from the economy of historical materialism and into culture. What began as a supplement, however, has ended up colonising the entire approach, such that the signifier ‘Marx’ is not longer required in Leftist theory.

Such a dismissal has been a major loss for global politics. The withdraw from the universal and emancipatory dimension of Marxism has left capitalism and various religious fundamentalisms – themselves only a response to the encroaching wave of capital – as the only players in town. While a move away from essentialism in favour of a focus on culture, language and the politics of enjoyment should generally be applauded, the losses have been more significant. As such, a range of discourses within the Left have emerged which – while taking the turn to language which inspired postmodernity seriously – have sought to rehabilitation the notion of universality. Conversely, references to Marxism, emancipation and in particular revolution remain unsteady. Against this wavering, the psycho-Marxism of Slavoj Žižek embodies an intriguing alternative to both the administrative approach of Sachs as well as the postmodern withdrawal from universalism, providing the potential for an alternative response to Sachs’ problematic, without falling into the pitfalls of postmodernity.

As a psychoanalytic theorist, Žižek takes culture and enjoyment seriously, beginning his work within the framework of Western Marxism. Nonetheless, Žižek seeks to go beyond this discourse, using Lacanian theory to produce a strong critique of capitalism and the historical unease with the concept of universality. Žižek attempts to restore the Marxist conceptions of revolution, class struggle and communism. Conversely, because he does so within a negative ontological framework which shares much in common with the postmodern turn, Žižek does not reproduce a nostalgic conception of Marxism. Instead, Žižek’s Marxism is a controversial discourse, marked by a refusal to posit an alternative vision and a rejection of any form of mere ‘activity’ that does not disrupt the standing horizon. Before exploring Žižek’s work, however, we shall consider the challenges to Marxism which have made his work relevant.

Ontology and the Discursive Turn

The turn to language – otherwise known as the linguistic or discursive turn – which has dominated social theory since the 1960s is characterised by the Structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent development of Post-Structuralism. The focus on the ontological dominance of language turned the issue of representation and truth into a dilemma for modernism and an impossibility for the postmodern. Rather than conceiving words to be an imitation of the thing they seek to represent, Saussure contended that meaning develops only in relation to other signs; meaning develops from the signifier, not from the referent. For this reason the signifier is arbitrary, contingent upon a history of relationships with other signifiers. Meaning is ultimately differential rather than natural. Because meaning is differential, there are no positive meanings – there are no signifiers which mean in and of themselves – and language becomes a negative substance (Ashenden, 2005: 197).

Saussure, however, considered language to be system in the sense that all differential meanings formed a closed chain; structuralism, for post-structuralists like Jacques Derrida, was not radical enough. Structuralism still reproduced the logic and pathos of Western metaphysics, giving language a presence that does not exist. Instead, Derrida problematised the notion of language as a system, describing it as ‘a structure without a centre’ (ibid: 205). In language, meaning is always deferred, and vitally does not catch up with itself; meaning is always ‘still to come’.

The turn to language led to the dominance of negative ontological theory. It rejected not only a grounding in a natural referent, but also in a transcendental signifier, a signifier with a positive meaning that could somehow ‘fix’ the contingency of all meaning. This move has had immense implications for social theory and political practice. In theoretical terms, because any sense of meaning could only be grounded in language itself there is no outside to language; Derrida, for example, famously remarked that ‘There is nothing outside of the text’. This rejection of realism is not necessary idealist. We do not necessarily have to down the road of Bishop Berkeley, conceiving that only what is constructed in the mind exists. A tree does indeed fall in the woods, despite no one being around to hear it. This is a problem Laclau dealt with effectively in debates with traditional Marxists[i] who were unable to come to grips with his re-reading of Marxism through the notions of hegemony and discourse. He states;

“… the discursive character of an object does not, by any means, imply putting its existence into question. The fact that a football is only a football as long as it is integrated within a system of socially constructed rules does not mean that is thereby ceases to be a physical object” (Laclau & Mouffe, 1990: 100 – 101)

Nonetheless, language – or, in Laclau terms, discourse – provides the horizon through which things appear meaningful. There can be no sense of objectivity or transcendental truth. This has had significant political consequences, at a theoretical level at least. Political formations could no longer make appeals to something outside of themselves – such as God, the Nation, rationality or human nature – these concepts which once provided a guarantee now existed only as differential elements in a chain of infinitely deferred meaning. Nonetheless, attempts to access a sense of essentialist anchor have not ceased. Indeed, as political liberalism began to question what were once considered the foundations of a good society, various fundamentalist narratives have fought back. Many who would believe that the concept of a ‘transcendental signifier’ is just academic mumbo-jumbo, still believe in the transcendental status of God and are willing to bring a gun to a town-hall meeting on Health care reform to prove it.

What has occurred, however, has been the capacity to understand these movements as ideological attempts to fix the chain of meaning. Ideological critique became not a matter of revealing a concealed concrete truth – that there is no God, perhaps – but rather in a critique of the abstract manner in which ideological constructions are called. It did not matter what proper name was given to God, only that a God-like signifier had a structuring role at all. Negative ontological political theory did not seek to substitute one truth with another – the working class being a superior Truth than God – but rather began to consider what we meant by ‘Truth’. It is this move – from Truth to the meaning of Truth – that signalled a move from traditional modernism to postmodernity.

The turn to language, however, is not a paradoxically homogenous Truth. Rather it is a discourse in itself, the fundamental elements of which continue to be sources of debate. As we shall see in this Chapter and the next, there are substantive differences between and within poststructuralist or postmodern ontology’s and that of psychoanalysis. Moreover, these differences relate to significant distinctions both in what it means to practice politics and political performance itself. Nonetheless, it is vital to note that the turn to language was a significant moment in political theory. In terms of Marxism, this ontological movement marked a change from culture as a supplement to language and culture as dominant in themselves. The turn proved a significant threat to Marxism, already challenged by historical events, the link between which was only just becoming clear. What began as attempt to supplement Marxism ended up rejecting it all together. Both occurred within the framework of postmodernism.

The Postmodern Break

Postmodernity is, according to Eagleton;

Rejecting any possibility of a political anchor that would provide the basis of the kind of essentialism that once defined Marxism, postmodern thought is founded upon the contingency of language and meaning. Without any sense of essentialism or metaphysics, postmodernism suggests a philosophical relativism that at best provides support for diversity, difference and a flowering freedom of identity positions. At worst this form of social constructivism leads to a cynically debauched wallowing in consumerism and administrated hedonism quite opposed to the well-meaning injunctions of Marxism.

Nonetheless, postmodernism did not develop in the absence of Marxism, but as an attempt to reform it. Those acknowledged to be at the forefront of postmodernity, including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard each began their work within the Marxist paradigm (Smart, 2005: 259). If, however, these theorists begun with the Marxist problematic they largely divorced themselves from Marx in their latter work.

There was much value in the rethinking of Marxism, one that started before the emergence of postmodernism in what came to be known as ‘Western Marxism’[ii]. It arose from attempts to explain the historical failures of Marxism and a recognition that change had to be cultural to be effective. Economic conditions alone would not produce revolution. In some ways Marx himself came to recognise this insight in his move from the economy of Das Kapital to the politics of the Communist Manifesto. As a result of the move from economy to culture, much of the rethinking of Marxism was framed in terms of a reconsideration of the essentialist ontology which drove the base-superstructure model. Conversely, what begun as an attempt to place more emphasis on politics and culture has resulted in the death of the economy altogether, except in practice. What started as an attempt to explain the failure of revolution resulted in the rejection of the idea of revolution all together .

The strongest blow was the first. When Lyotard rejected any sense of grand narrative, the narrative to which he referred was Marxism (Eagleton, 2003:38). The death of the grand narrative signals perhaps the most foundation element of postmodernism; the rejection of fundamentalism and essentialism. The awareness that language was only referential without any ultimate guarantee meant there could be no grand narrative on which to support a vision of politics; any such narrative would have to rely upon a signifier that did not rely upon another. Language proved to be a poor substitute for God or transcendental rationality. Nonetheless, postmodernism looks suspiciously like a meta-explanation about the end of meta-explanation, the one explanation to examine all others (ibid: 45). This deterministic narrative about the rejection of deterministic epistemology has led to something of a normative crisis; it became embarrassing to speak of morality. Morality was for those who broke up parties. Without an essentialist anchor, ethics loses all traction. If the grand narrative is dead, then everything and nothing is possible. Postmodernism, in this sense can be regarded as deeply conservative, both in the sense that the rejection of all foundations has led many to search for even deeper foundations – hence the rise of fundamentalisms in the 21^st century – and in the dismissal of emancipation that became associated with the death of determinism.

Only the most vulgar forms of postmodernity – generally found in cultural practice, rather than political theory – dismissed the notion of ethics all together, even if morality was a step too far. Postmodern thinkers began to reconsider what it meant to live the good life, a large part of which included the rethinking of ‘good’ meant. Much of the ethical thinking of those of a negative ontological bent was itself negative; a critique of those unities that should be differences. For these postmodernists, any hint of the normative or unity was immediately repressive. Benevolent as it might be to invoke the concept, it immediately restored the primacy of God; etymologists were the ultimate theists. Because language itself has a normative dimension – language is naturally repressive because it narrows down difference by turning differences into categorical unity[iii] – the task of postmodern ethics was to open up this unity in a celebration of difference (ibid: 13).

Part of the critical direction of postmodern thought has been against the kind of instrumental rationality promoted by Sachs. Sachs’ positivist epistemologically relies heavily on the use of natural science (within which he includes economics) and the positivism of statistics. Sachs appears not to consider statistics as a representation, rather they are poverty itself. If, in a sudden attack of postmodern fancy, Sachs were to conceive of statistics as mere representations, he might have cause to doubt not only his means of mapping suffering, but also his response to it. The ‘I-PAT’ equation may not appear such an effective device.

Sachs rejoinder might be that his work is logical, but for the postmodernists, this is the problem. Lyotard states, according to Eagleton; ‘we do not want to destroy capital because it is not rational, but because it is’ (ibid: 71 ). Nonetheless, the postmodern rejection of representations such as statistics is foolish at its extremes. Statistics-as-representations may be open to manipulation, but that does not mean that the suffering they seek to represent does not exist.

Against the failure of determinist, the prospect of emancipation appeared positively Utopian. Laclau, although not considered a postmodernist, embodied the postmodern position when he stated; ‘We are today at the end of emancipation and at the beginning of freedom’(Laclau, 1996: 18) Whose freedom is up for grabs is uncertain. The loss of the emancipatory drive can be regarded as the biggest loss of postmodernism. Emancipation is precisely not the aim of postmodernism as it would involve unfashionable universal constructions and collective movements. Most importantly, emancipation rightfully brought up the question of under whose name it would occur. Widespread change suggested notions of power and universalism that were no longer palatable. Emancipation sounded too much like a concept.

Nonetheless, this is not to suggest that postmodernity views the social world unproblematically. The opposite is properly true. It is just that for postmodern thought the problem of emancipation amounted to a deconstruction of the meta-physical assumptions inherent in the signifier rather than any actual change in people’s lives.

Yet postmodernism is not without value. The danger inherent in the illusionary nature of truth and essentialism has been the biggest lesson of postmodernity has taught Leftist politics. No longer can we hold innocently to any sense of ideology, longing for the annihilation of the enemy who is nothing but a construction of ideology itself. The Left would be more than reticent to forget the horrors that have been committed in its name, particularly in the name of Marxism. As such, for Bauman, postmodernity is modernity without illusions, a reminder that modernity has limits (Smart, 2005: 267).

As a critique of contemporary capitalism, it is particularly insightful; far more than the likes of Sachs, postmodern though takes capitalism seriously. Postmodern consumer-finance capitalism[iv] does indeed exhibit Marx’s contention that ‘All that is solid melts into thin air’. There is certainly value in a form of ethics which supports difference and breaks down barriers closed by essentialist anchors. Nonetheless, although the expansion of ethics and normatively provided by postmodernity should be celebrated we should not mistake these new social movements and identity politics as the problems of our time (see Žižek, 2000) [v]. Indeed, the postmodern rejection of meta-narratives is intimately linked with the development of capitalism as the unacknowledged grand narrative of our time, if only in practice rather than theory. Westerners may have a more diverse range of restaurants at which to eat, but for those whom experience eating as an infrequent necessary, postmodern liberation remains entirely Other[vi].

Indeed, we can consider that postmodernism – instead of being a radical form of emancipation from identity – is just the latest form of capitalism. Previously theorists had considered capital to require the parochial discipline that characterised the industrial era. Modernity’s combined and uneven entry into a postmodern era was considered to be a mortal threat to the interests of capitalism. Fredric Jameson has shown, however, how postmodernity has actually saved capitalism from its own inherent contradictions . As Jameson (Jameson, 1991, 1996) postulates, the burgeoning development of social identities that came with the birth of postmodernism became a seamless cure for the ills of overproduction, as the new identities were ideal for the development of new products and new markets. These markets were created upon the predominant form of politics that has emerged from the turn to language and postmodernity, known as the ‘new social movements’, or identity politics. Whilst these movements have provided the impetus for the liberation of very real limitations upon subjective expression, they cannot be considered to be subversive. Rather than acting as a threat to capitalism, working women, racial enlightenment and sexual reform allowed the development of new and profitable markets. Postmodernism may have been experienced as liberation for those outside of the hegemony of the white man within western nations, but it has achieved little more than the commodification of cultural difference.

Thus while postmodernism acts a valuable reminder of the dangers of some forms of modernist practice it appears no answer to both the problematic posed Sachs and his own (hegemonic) response. Moreover, postmodernism operates as a supplement to the modernist approach to politics embodied by Sachs. Whilst this form of Leftist administration works pragmatically towards softening the injustices of capitalism, postmodern culture allows for a celebration of its benefits. Ultimately there is something a little tragic about postmodernity; the Left appears gun-shy, unwilling to take power in any radical sense lest the mistakes of the past are repeated.

Nonetheless, it is, as Eagleton states in regards to the foundations of the Western empire; ‘a rather awkward moment in human history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions’ (2003:102). Whilst lessons must be learned from postmodern discourse on epistemology and ontology , the circumstances of today demand a re-entry into the political and the question of universality. Moreover, whilst the postmodern reading of Marxism has been necessary, this reading has taken away the universal dimension of its critique of capitalism; that capitalism must be opposed through a discourse of emancipation is several steps too far for many forms of postmodern discourse.

Marxism remains the radical alternative form of political economy against the meta-hegemony of capitalism. It is only through Marxism that the dimension of political economy remains alive. In order to response to the material contradictions of global capitalism, we must not accept the split horizon constituted by Sachs and the postmodernists. Rather we must return to a rethinking of the Marxist tradition and the dimension of universality. It has been the restoration of universality as a category within a consideration of the discursive turn which has provided the impetus for post-Marxist theory, which conceived of the discursive turn not as a threat but rather as a vital moment in the renewal of the Marxist historical project.

(Post)Marxism

Perhaps the first text in what is now regarded as post-Marxist theory is Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985)[vii]. Laclau and Mouffe sought to rethink Marxism away from its essentialist foundations without getting caught up in the particularism that dominates postmodern thought. Laclau’s early work – as we shall see in Chapter Four, Laclau has distanced himself from his earlier thought – used Gramsci’s category of hegemony to move ‘Beyond the positivity of the social’. Post-Marxist discourse is split, as Mark Devenney states; between the need to “keep in sight the normative idealism which underpins one spirit of Marx, the insistence that things ought to be otherwise[and]…On the other hand post-Marxist accounts cannot retain intact the rationalist and deterministic limitations of the Western Marxist tradition’ (2002: 9).

The most important element of the move from postmodernism to post-Marxism is the restoration of the category of universality. This restoration, however, has little in common with the sense of universality apparent in the modernist tradition in which Marx was embedded. Modernism did not have a uniform sense of universality – attempts to install the universal range from a sense of rationality, transcendentalism and reflexity – all relied on the fixity of the signifier. Postmodernist thought rejected this fixity, preferring differential particularism. For Laclau, however, the focus on particularism, as well as being philosophically inept, was also a form of political defeatism, unable to restore the dimension of emancipation .

Nonetheless, Laclau takes on much of postmodernist critique of the universal. The universal has no presence but its own failure; the impossibility of any particular signifier installing itself as a transcendental sense of universality is the moment of universality (Laclau, 2000b: 84). Laclau labels this moment the empty signifier. The empty signifier is at the heart of the battle for hegemony as particular signifiers battle to fill the empty place of universality. We shall focus much more on the notion of universality – particularly the difference between Laclau’s post-Marxism and Žižek’s Hegelianism, in Chapter Five – as it entails an important element of the overall direction of this project. The ethical and political consequences of this conception of universality will also be considered in more detail in Chapters Three and Four. For now it is enough to note that for both Laclau, in his ‘Radical Democracy’ and later Populism, as well as Devenney in his notion of an ‘Ethics of Incommensurability’, the empty universal suggests an ethical approach which subverts the limitations of postmodernity.

The difficulty with this particular reading of post-Marxism, however, is that it has struggled to develop a conception of the economic away from its rejection of Marx’s essentialist notion of the economy (Devenney, 2002; 18). As Devenney states (ibid: 11), much of the energy of post-Marxist thought his been directed at Marx’s description of the economy as;

“the real foundation on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life” (Marx, 1977: 389).

The primary charge of post-Marxism is that the economy cannot be an object in itself and as such cannot determine social relations other than the through the contingency of hegemony. Thus the economy is not economic in and of itself, but rather just another element of political discursivity. Symbolic of this position, Devenney (2002:16) quotes Daly (2002: 114) in stating; ‘At an abstract level the term economy can be understood as designating the material reproduction of social life. However, the way in which that material reproduction is understood and organised is finally a political matter’.

This kind of position reminds us of the 1970s feminist slogan, ‘The personal is political’ and its infamous rejoinder ‘the personal is personal too, so piss off’. Yes, the economy is political, but it is also economic. Just because the economy is always political does not mean that politics is equivalent to economics. Rather the economy is always the political economy. We shall speak more to this matter in Chapter Five when we consider Žižek’s Lacanian critique of economy, determinism and causality. Nonetheless, it is worth considering that whilst post-Marxism has partially succeeded in restoring the dimension of universality to the discursive turn, its attachment to Marxism appears merely referential. Devenney contention that post-Marxism has lost its critique of the economy should be treated symptomatically; it is not a contemporary aberration, to be resolved with better application of the theory, as Devenney treats it, but rather an indication of a structural impossibility within post-Marxism in regards to the impossibility of political economy and class struggle.

Psycho-Marxism

Restoring the dimension of political economy to Marxism has been the task of Žižek, who whilst sharing much on common with post-Marxism, goes beyond this term through his Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian understanding of universality. Žižek’s work is part of a significant history of ‘psycho-Marxism[viii]’. The difficulties of combining psychoanalysis and Marxism are intertwined with the collective hope and traumatic failure of Leftist emancipation. Following the dis-ease with the improper progress of Marxist practice and theory, psychoanalysis has been long looked upon both as the saviour and the failure of radical Leftist politics. Yet no stable theoretical fusion has developed between the two traditions, and contemporary theory has come to regard the notion of collective emancipation as rather pathetically passé. Instead of hope, our society holds onto the contradictory fetishes of the necessity of the grand-narrative of capitalism and the contingency of language and culture, between which lies a theoretical waste land where only the brave or unaware dare to stride.

Since its development of psychoanalysis – with its focus on the unconscious, repression, sexuality, desire and the death drive as the destruction core of humanity – has had a major impact on social theory. The engagement with psychoanalysis has enlarged the understanding of ideology, subjectivity, the role of culture and enjoyment in politics and the relationship between the individual and society (Elliott, 2005: 175). Freud’s Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) exemplified psychoanalysis as a sociological pursuit as Freud developed an understanding of the manner in which the demands of civilised society required a level of repression in the subject which was expressed in a destructive manner[ix]. We shall explore this more in Chapter Four.

Freud was re-read by Lacan – who maintained he was only supplementing Freud’s work –reworking psychoanalysis in light of Saussure’s structural linguistics, famously stating that; ‘the unconscious is structured like a language. (Elliot, 2005: 181). By this Lacan meant that ‘language, as a system of differences, constitutes the subject’s repressed desire’ (ibid: 182). In this sense, unconscious desire, like language, constitutes an intersubjective space between and within individual subjects (ibid: 183). Moreover, intersubjectivity – with the impossibilities associated with its constitution as a linguistically deferred system – is the only form of subjectivity. As Anthony Elliot(2004: 1)States;

“For many, the theoretical advantages of Lacan’s Freud concerned, above all, his inflation of the role of language in the construction of the psyche, an inflation which happened to fit hand in glove with the ‘linguistic turn’ of the social sciences”.

Lacanian theory[x], it seemed, had come along at just the right moment, speaking to the dilemmas of postmodernism whilst responding to the problematic to whilst postmodernism was itself a response. Against the postmodernists but within the linguistic turn, Lacanian psychoanalysis achieved an alternative hegemony by responding to several of the problems which haunted postmodernism. In particular, Lacanian thought sought to rehabilitate subjectivity, structure and the body, each of which shall be expanded on in much more detail in the following Chapter.

As a response to the ‘death of the subject’ in postmodernism – postmodernity takes the subject to be a fictious creation of the enlightenment, destroyed by the shiftless urges of language and difference – Lacanian psychoanalysis, through Žižek in particular, has restored the primacy of the subject, abet not in a form enlightenment Cartesians would want to take home (see Žižek, 1999 ). Most prominently, Lacanian theory allowed for a rethinking of the relationship between the individual and the collective. After postmodernism, part of this rethinking involved a restoration of the category of the subject.

Against the historicity of postmodernity[xi], Lacanian theory have sought to renew the notion of the structure, although without the functionalist-rationalist element. Žižek, for example, suggests that Lacanian theory involving a radical overturn of traditional notions of causality. In doing so he suggests that historicity is simply a response to an underlying structural historical impossibility.One of the central advantages of Lacanian theory as a response to postmodernism was the emphasis it placed upon the body and materiality in discourse. As we shall soon examine, Laclau and the like had largely overlooked materiality in favour of discourse, whereas Žižek places it at the heart of his theoretical endeavour.

Nonetheless, the use of psychoanalysis in relation to politics is intensely controversial, even though – as Stavrakakis (2007: 1) reports – it has become second in influence only to analytical liberalism[xii]. Lacan is accepted as a theorist of film or sexuality, but not of politics. Indeed, Elliot (2004:2), argues that; “At its bleakest, the Lacanian symbolic was deployed to underscore the inevitability of social order and political domination as a fundamental state of human desire”. Moreover, Andrew Robinson and Simon Tormey (Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Tormey, 2005, 2006), in relation to Žižek’s appropriation of Marxism, argue that the negativity inherent in Lacanian thought simply ends of reproducing the antagonism, domination and violence of capitalism, the very things they believe Leftist politics should seek to revoke. Sean Homer (1996) argues that although psychoanalysis can engage in a ‘continuing critical dialogue with political and social theory’ (109) because it is constitutively unable to develop a positive sense of ideology, other more reactionary positions will fill this gap. For this reason psychoanalytic discourse is an inappropriate partner for Leftist political practice. Likewise, Elizabeth Bellamy(1993) comes to argue that whilst psychoanalysis has tremendous analytic potential, it does not offer any more fruitful opportunities for political action than had already been developed in the discursive turn. She ends her paper by suggesting that psychoanalytic political practice is not desirable, even if it were possible.

More subtely, Glyn Daly (1999), whilst considering the benefits of (Žižekian) psychoanalysis, argues that psychoanalytic theory misses more subtle opportunities fro political action that could be more fruitful explored in combination with post-Structuralism. Psychoanalysis, it seemed, explained the domination of capitalism and the hopelessness of culture a little too well. It all appeared too inevitable; one of the central critiques of Žižek at least is that he misses the more subtle opportunities for political action.

Much – if not all – of this criticism is directed at Žižek; we shall return to this in more detail shortly. It is directed at Žižek not only because he is the most significant scholar in the discourse, but also because his form of politics relies heavily upon a reading of Marxism. Psychoanalysis provided an alternative means by which to respond to the ‘crisis’ of Marxism caused by the discursive turn. Psychoanalysis was initially attached to Marxism to explain the perceived shortcomings of Marxism in response to the continued presence and development of capitalism. In this initial relationship, characterised by the Freudian Marxism of Wilhelm Reich and the Frankfurt School theorists, psychoanalysis was used to add a theory of subjectivity to Marxism in the face of the failure of the Marxist ‘revolutionary subject’. These theories of subjectivity focused mainly on the role of culture in mediating the effects of capitalism and preventing a true class consciousness from emerging.

If this could be described as the first phase of ‘Psycho-Marxism’ the second phase was dominated by Louis Althusser’s structuralist revision of Marxism (Miklitsch, 1998: 85). Althusser did not seek to fuse together the two discourses, but rather take advantage of what he believed to be a structural homology between class struggle and the unconscious (Ozselcuk & Madra, 2007: 86). Althusser’s return to Marx through psychoanalysis was the first to be dominated by Lacan, rather than Freud. As such, it cultivated a re-reading of Freud as well, framed in Lacanian terms. Althusser was perhaps the first to politicise Lacanian thought in his reworking of Marxism and ideology. Althusser used Lacan’s notion of the mirror stage to exemplify (mis)recognition in ideology through what he called ‘interpellation’. Althusser’s work had a strong influence upon efforts to rework both Marxist determinism and the role of culture and ideology in maintaining the dominance of capital.

Lacans’ focus on language as an (unconscious) structuring element of the human psyche has made psychoanalysis a necessarily sociological investigation, one that could be integrated with Marxism not by way of adding a theory of the psyche, as in Freudian Marxism, but rather as an equal contribution to a theory of intersubjectivity. Through Lacan, this form of Marxism was able to respond to the linguistic challenge of postmodernity without losing a grip on the normative drive that constituted Marxism.

Nonetheless, the movement from Freud to Lacan proved to be both a threat and opportunity for Marxist theory. Lacan’s emphasis on the structuring role, and ultimate failure, of language removed the foundations of theoretical Marxist essentialism and previously assumed forms of political action. The normative drive may have remained as a reference point, but the essentialist justifications had long disappeared, dispatched to a theoretical attic to allow for occasional bouts of nostalgic. Importantly, however, this dimension was not dismissed altogether as in forms of postmodernity. Althusser and those that followed remained Marxists for a reason, although others may not have been so sure. The problem was that while psychoanalysis did not fall prey to the transgressive particularism of postmodernity, it did share a deep suspicion of politics, utopianism and revolution. If critics have found psychoanalysis woefully inadequate as a political touchstone, then traditionalist Marxist certainly did not find it a suitable torch bearer.

Although Marxism and psychoanalysis shared several theoretical similarities – a committed engagement to reducing the gap between theory and practice, a similar notion of causality (in terms of class struggle and the unconscious respectively) and a radically divergent focus on generating change – in both their underlying ontology and emancipatory optimism they proved radically incompatible. For some, such as Sean Homer (Homer, 2001), this makes any attempt to develop psychoanalytic Marxism as a singular practice a foolish pursuit. He claims that Žižek’s ‘Lacanism appears to rule out the possibility of any orthodox ‘understanding’ of Marxism’ (ibid: 7). Yet, despite the apparent tension, the use of Lacan opened up the possibility of new forms of Marxism. As such, Althusser can be considered the first in a generation of post-Marxists, a discipline characterised by Ernesto Laclau’s ‘Discourse Theory’.

It is at this point that a vital split occurs within the psychoanalytic reading of Marxism. On one side of this gap is the democratic ethos of Stavrakakis and the earlier Laclau. Laclau’s work has been supplemented by that of Yannis Stavrakakis. This discourse seeks to use Lacanian theory to animate a construction of democracy. Ultimately it suggests an ideal, if partial, institutionalisation of psychoanalytic ethics as a form of political community. Although Laclau takes reference from a post-Marxist position, Stavrakakis’ more overtly Lacanian theory is divorced from any Marxist orientation. On the other side of the gap is the work of Žižek, Badiou and Jameson. These theorists are more explicitly Marxist, although as we shall throughout the remainder of the thesis, their interpretations differ greatly. Moreover, their work, despite Žižek’s critique of Badiou as a theorist of pure-politics (see Žižek, 1999: 127 -244) , takes the economy, and capitalism, much more seriously. For these theorists (it is difficult to group Badiou, Jameson and Žižek together as a singular discourse, even if they have shared characteristics) political economy is the object of their inquiry and it is no coincidence that they do not seek to postulate any concrete form of political formations, although all three make use of a Utopian reference.

Today, the problem lies in our inability to conceive of political economy. The likes of Sachs remove the political element, whereas the alternative postmodern response has lost an attachment to the economy, as well as any emancipatory drive. Whilst post-Marxist theory has been able to renew the Marxist tradition and defend the necessity of universality, it has been constitutively unable to convincingly return to a Marxist dimension of economy. Žižek, particularly through his concern with class struggle, suggests a manner of returning to the primacy of the economy via a rethinking of causality and determinism. This rethinking leads to the possibility of an alternative response to Sachs’ ‘sustainability’ problematic.

Nonetheless, Žižek appears both unable and unwilling to posit an alternative economic imaginary. Instead he argues that the status of capitalism is such that any alternative or radical action has already been accounted for by the system; in these times it is neither possible to produce revolutionary action, nor conceive of alternative imaginaries. It is for this reason that only the ‘parallax view’ provided by psychoanalysis can restore Marxism and the impossibility of political economy. Because of this interpretation of capital – along with the constitutive inability of psychoanalytic theory to produce a discourse of the good – Žižek’s work has become the point of much academic and political frustration.

Thus, against the death of history and the impotence of Leftist action, in this thesis, I shall argue that the work of Slavoj Žižek operates at a symptomatic point within Leftist discourse. Žižek’s work occupies this point because he attempts to do the impossible and bring in political economy, in doing so radically questioning the meta-hegemony of capitalism. At the same time however, whilst Žižek argues that all forms of activity which do not threaten the foundations of the system only serve to secure the status of that system, he refuses to posit an alternative imaginary or form of economy. As Žižek himself would argue, as a symptom, ‘Žižek’ has become a point of enjoyment. Yet, it is the wager of this thesis that despite the apparent impossibilities of Lacanian politics and Žižek’s interpretation of capitalism, it is Žižek’s work that provides the most hope for humanity’s suffering majority.

The Žižekian Approach

As could be expected from a theorist who seeks to combine Lacan, Schelling and Marx, some theorists have argued that Žižek’s work is without a core trajectory, that there is not a true Žižek, but in an ironically postmodern analysis to which Žižek would stand in stanch disapproval, there are multiple Žižek’s to be constructed (Kay, 2003: 16). Whilst there is limited validity in this interpretation – Žižek’s work certainly does display both an incredible range of theoretical knowledge and a certain talent for bringing them together – it glosses over the core of Žižek’s interventions. With Matthew Sharpe (2004: 4), however, this thesis take the position that there is a fundamental trajectory to Žižek’s work, abet one that takes some unexpected and discombobulating twists. These twists always revolve around the same theoretical kernel; the Lacanian Real. Despite the frequency of his publications, Žižek’s Lacanian theoretical apparatus has stayed remarkably regular, in particular his devotion to the Lacanian Real around which his work, and his interpretation of reality, revolves (and fails).

Žižek’s political interventions, an application of the Real itself, reveal the underlying operation of Žižek’s work. His work displays a number of political stances, or perhaps strategies, from an implicit support of Laclau’s radical democratic project, calls to traverse the fantasy and repoliticise the economy, a controversial affair with the Lacanian Act (one that still lingers today) and more recently a move into ‘subtractive politics’. Despite the range of positions, however, they all respond to the same factor – the impossibility, or rather the instantiation of impossibility of anti-capitalist politics.

Žižek’s approach to political analysis and strategy can be best illustrated by a regularly cited example within his work, that of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss’ interpretation of a tribal village (see Žižek, 1994: 25; Žižek 2006: 25; Žižek, 2008: 287). Here the villagers were asked to draw ground map of their village. Two groups emerged – one that represented the village as two concentric circles, the other separated by an invisible linear frontier. The question Žižek asks, following Levi-Strauss, is how to interpret this discrepancy. Within standard social science, two positions emerge which can be broadly identified as modernist and postmodernist. The postmodernist position conceives that there is no true village layout – reality exists only in the manner in which it is constructed by the villagers – there is no truth to be told about any social construction. Ethical practice here would be to deconstruct those positions which have developed.

There is validity in this contention; each representation of the village likely corresponds to the ideological construction of reality for that group of villagers. Moreover, each construction must naturally exclude an alternative construction or posit another as the antagonistic point which prevents the fullness of being. In this sense deconstruction via ideological critique can be valuable art in political practice. Nonetheless, if one the villagers’ central problem is contradictions in the material reproduction of society, it is unclear what this kind of approach offers.

By contrast the modernist perspective takes an opposite, empirically based, approach to truth. Here there is a truth to be had and it is one that can be discovered empirically, perhaps by obtaining some aerial photographs of the village. More enlightened modernist research may seek to understand the power relations which have caused the apparent distortion from truth, focusing on the disjunction between appearance and essence. Again, there is something to be said for this position, perhaps a version of the truth. It is certainly the approach that Sachs takes, attempting to map the contours of the global economy, establish a method of dealing with the issues at hand and create a manifesto for future practice. What this approach will miss however – and Sachs does – is the antagonism which is causing the division in representation.

The identification of this antagonism as the only Truth of any given social construction is at the core of Žižek’s Lacanian-Hegelian rehabilitation of dialectical materialism, and his subsequent analysis of social life. For Žižek – like the postmodernists – life is socially constructed in language which has no foundation outside of itself. In this sense, empirical analysis has no neutral access to the truth; it is always in itself a social construction. Žižek, however, also rejects the social constructivist ontology. Here his approach is reminiscent of Freud’s interpretation of dreams (Žižek, 1989: 11-15). Freud contended that the first step in analysis is to identify that dreams are meaningful, rather than random physiological events. The second step, however, is to reject the search for a hidden meaning in the dream, to acknowledge that the meaning itself is not important. Instead of focusing on the ‘dream-work’ itself, Freud analysed repression that established this dreamwork. The crucial point to be emphasised is that the second step cannot occur without the first. Likewise, Žižek’s approach needs to reject the positivist mode of Truth in stating that reality is socially constructed. The crucial step, however, is to acknowledge that these social constructions always fail, they necessary trip over some symptomatic point.

Thus, for Žižek, in contrast to other Lacanian-inspired approaches such as Laclau’s discourse theory, the point of analysis is not to reveal the contingency of social constructions, but rather the antagonistic point by which they achieve stability. This analysis has two sides; the relations of enjoyment (based around the Lacanian notions of jouissance, desire and ideological fantasy) by which these constructions achieve traction and the extimate exclusions which are the foundations for that order. As such, a Žižekian analysis of capitalism could focus upon the jouissance achieved through consumerism, the desire for commodities and the ideological construction of progress. Primary in such an analysis though, is the exclusion which founds the order, which makes this horizon of enjoyment possible. Žižek argues that within capitalism this foundational exclusion is class. Class struggle is the impossible antagonism around which social life is splintered; both Sachs’ modernist economy and the postmodern cultural-political horizon are responses to this antagonism. Therefore any psychoanalytic critique of capitalism must be an analysis of class struggle; the manner in which class struggle is excluded from the capitalist horizon. By labelling this antagonism class struggle[xiii] – opposed a Freudian-Lacanian reading of the (impossible) sexual relationship as the determining intersubjective antagonism – Žižek makes his practice explicitly Marxist.

In applying this epistemology to capitalism we can see that psychoanalysis allows for a dialectical understanding which holds that capitalism can produce great wealth, but also great poverty through the same mechanisms. Our choice is not to hold to one or the other – that capitalism is a wealth ‘machine’ and only contingent aberrations are causing poverty, or that capitalism only produces poverty – but rather to hold them together, to consider that the Truth of capitalism is neither consumerist wealth or suffering and hunger, but rather the gap between the two. It is this gap, the Lacanian Real, which is both excluded from the dominant representations of capitalism and appears in symptoms within that discourse. It is the traction inherent in these symptoms which offer political hope in terms of the potential for dislocation inherent in the disturbing status of the Real.

Although Žižek does not suggest an alternative approach, there is no hidden or disavowed truth to be found; that Žižek does somehow hold a position to which he is unwilling to openly commit. Rather, here we should follow Žižek’s own suggestion that there is always some truth in appearance. We should not seek to find some hidden essence in Žižek’s critiques and accept that in terms of positive political formations, Žižek has no position. As Tormey recalls, Žižek once commented to him at a conference, ‘I have a hat, but I have no rabbit’.

More than this, like Lacan, Žižek does not seem to believe such a position is possible; all rabbits are illegitimate, so we must examine the shape of the hats from which they spring. Lacanian psychoanalysis simply cannot proscribe how the world should be; there is nothing more repugnant to Lacanian sensibilities. Few disciplines can be as aware of their own limitations then psychoanalysis, a feeling embodied by Freud’s contention that analysis allows the analysand to move from ‘suffering to mere unhappiness’. This comes in firm contrast to the utopian hope of some forms of Marxism. If Marxism was liable to fall prey to ambitious totalitarianism, psychoanalytic discourse is more likely to suffer from cynical conservativism. Given a Žižekian twist, however, the incompatible combination provides a powerful and disturbing critique of global capitalism. Conversely, against the positivising history of Marxism, Žižek’s psycho-Marxism provides no specific co-ordinates for the future.

Certainly, few critics are prepared to accept the limits of Žižek’s work, rather searching through his work for a hidden essence. Too many theorists and critics look to Žižek as a distorted form of the master, constantly demanding answers from his work. Laclau, for example contends;

“… Žižek had told us he wants to overthrow capitalism; now we are served notice that he wants to do away with liberal democratic regimes – to be replaced, it is true, by a thoroughly different regime which he does not have the courtesy of letting us know anything about…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 does not know either…Žižek’s thought is not organised around a truly political reflection, but is, rather, a psychoanalytic discourse which draws its examples from the politico-ideological field… I can discuss politics with Butler because she talks about the real world, about strategic problems people face in their actual struggles, but with Žižek it is not possible to even start to do so” (Laclau, 2000a: 289-290, emphasis in original).

Likewise, the title of Jeremy Gilbert’s contribution to the polemically critical text The Truth of Žižek (Bowman & Stamp, 2007) , All the Right Questions, All the Wrong Answers (2007), suggests the predominant political reading of Žižek’s work. There is something quite valid about this position. Despite Žižek’s powerful readings of the political terrain, his work only sporadically moves beyond critique; theorists looking for ‘the right answer’ within Žižek’s work are going will be sadly disappointed. Perhaps symptomatic of this demand to the Master is the tendency to allow Žižek ‘right of reply’ in publications critical of his work, including the International Journal for Žižek Studies and a number of critical and introductory texts (Bowman & Stamp, 2007; Eagleton, 2009; Kay, 2003; Sharpe, 2004; Stavrakakis, 1999; Wright & Wright, 1999; Zupančič, 2000).

Moreover, as well as rejecting the formalisations of any solution, Žižek also rejects the ‘activity’ that characterises contemporary Leftist politics. In rejecting the administrative approaches characterised by Sachs, as well as more radical social democratic measures, Žižek has left himself open to accusations of conservatism. Critics (see Devenney, 2007; Robinson & Tormey, 2005) suggest that not only are Žižek’s politics impotent because he will accept nothing short of revolution, but that in doing so Žižek misses more subtle opportunities for action. As such, by limiting political practice to the impossible, Žižek’s work becomes politically conservative, waiting, as Ernesto Laclau accuses, for the Martians.

Žižek’s location within the Left has meant that his work is the subject of much frustration, speculation and adulation, either being sought out as a mysterious messiah or mis-guided conservative. Žižek is neither of these things, but we must consider, given Žižek’s status as the embodiment of the difficulties of the Left, what the consequences of his work are, in particular in light of the primary material contradiction of capital; the hungry. This shall be the task of the remainder of this thesis.

We shall first consider the foundational psychoanalytic concepts that are driving Žižek’s work, in order to consider how Lacanian theory has been able to inform a theory of Marxism. Conversely, in considering the dialectical operation of jouissance and the Real, we shall reveal the distortions that occur in Marxist practice through an exploration of the notion of surplus in each discipline.

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[i] See Geras(1987)

[ii] This label emerged largely as a way to distinguish between the messy political practice of Marxism in the USSR and more critical forms which emerged in the global West.

[iii] For instance the concept of ‘tree’ collapses a number of different types of trees under a singular meaning. Likewise, the signifier ‘Women’ is repressive because it ignores the difference between different categories of Women e.g. Black women, working women, homosexual Women, all of which are themselves are repressive concepts…

[iv] A solid argument can be made for this form of capitalism as late capitalism, rather than postmodern, but we shall soon discuss this in reference to Jameson

[v] Identity politics, rather than being an exemplary element of postmodernism rather embodies the position of cultural studies between modernism and postmodernism. Identity politics, although a form of particularly concurrent with postmodernism, is an attempt to establish an essential unity that is quite opposed to the celebration of difference which characterises postmodernity. Nonetheless, in terms of political positioning, identity politics and cultural studies have much in common

[vi] Moreover, no hegemonic mode of politics has developed from postmodern thought. This is no specific reason to discount it, but it is worth noting that politics in the United States is divided between the pragmatist Democrats and fundamentals Republicans, rather than any sense of the postmodern. Postmodernism exists, but as a form of cultural practice and commodification. For this reason, postmodern culture can be considered as a hegemonic historical response to the impossibility of class struggle.

[vii] We use post-Marxist to refer to a discourse that rejects what are thought to be the traditional tenants of Marxist theory, yet utilises it as a referential touchstone. Moreover, post-Marxism has come to refer specifically to a discipline characterised by Laclau’s discourse theory and the Essex school at which he is based.

[viii] The prefix ‘psycho’ is appropriately radical compared to the lack of substance in Laclau’s glizty brand of ‘disco-Marxism’

[ix] This is a line of thought further developed by Herbert Marcuse in particular

[x] Lacan himself was working contemporarously with postmodernism, but his work has since come to be seen as a response to postmodernity

[xi] Ironically, postmodernity has been generally blind to its own historicity

[xii] Elliot too remarks; ‘Indeed, for some considerable period of time, it seemed that theory just wasn’t theory unless the name Lacan was referenced’ (1)

[xiii] The act of naming class struggle is a controversial point within Žižek’s work. Some scholars, such as Laclau argue that there is no reason to award transcendental primacy to class struggle above any other possible antagonism. Jameson does not have an issue with Žižek’s understanding of ontological causality – he uses History in much the same way Žižek utilises class – but instead questions Žižek’s naming of this point. We shall discuss both positions in detail in Chapters Five and Six.

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