The Marxist answer to your question as to how to know the thing is that we know the truth of a thing through practice, through practical-critical or revolutionary activity. So,in this case the answer to your question is which knowing of the thing helps us to change it, to abolish it, turn it into its opposite. The Marxist epistemological test is practice.
Charles
>>> rc&am <rcollins at netlink.com.au> 01/18 2:48 AM >>>
here's a question then for butler, lacan, etc reading. is this 'thing' that
'we' are afraid 'they' will steal for 'us' something - as in, a particular
thing, with partiular and recognisable content (say, land, as in the example
above), or is it enjoyment, or is it no thing (void), or is it a complex of all
these? butler would - as i read her thus far - go for the performative
reading, the emptiness of the thing, which nonetheless cannot be declared empty
without engaing in its performance. (is that right?) zizek would go for the
enjoyment, the 'our way of life', the kernel which resists sheer
performativity. (is that how others read him?) myself, i'm still thinking
this one through. and whilst i can sit back and know - according to a marxian
rationalism - what is actually going on, that does not make it go away, that
does not make this particular fantasy disappear as a constitutive moment of
australian politics.
angela