Hello again.
On Fri, 23 Jul 1999 15:18:04 -0400 kelley wrote:
> i keep coming up with the same complaint doug
mentioned: so how do we transcend this? is this analysis of
subject formation wholly ahistorical insofar as it provides
utterly no theory of change.
The Slovene Lacanian School, in general, is attempting to provide a detailed map of ideological structures within culture.
Key to this analysis is a critique of pure desire (in contrast to Kant's critique of pure reasoning). So if you run the gambit of their writings, there is very little untouched... from popular culture to philosophy to literature and performance art and, of course, psychoanalysis. The aim to transcend this is a political project, in the Castoriadisian sense, not a theoretical project. Theory attempts to grasp what is true... and, following Hegel, how truth permutates through a fluid reality. I really don't see any ahistorical character to this.
The primary criticism, it seems to me, leveled against theorists like Zizek is that he locates things like ethnocentrism, sexism, nationalism, racism, and class struggle in the Real. But this makes a great deal of sense. If class struggle exists, if we live within it, then it cannot be explored with a scientific objectivating procedure. In other words, something like class struggle isn't reduceable to the imaginary or the symbolic. To say that class struggle, for instance, is Real - it to mean that literally. It is Real, class struggle exists. Now if you want to say that this denies the social character of class struggle, then you have to admit that science *can* grasp it completely, or you are forced into the position of denying that class struggle exists at all! So these kind of Lacanian investigations are highly sensitive to change... and well away that history isn't a baseball bat that you hit people as a form of correctional social conditioning. Lacanian analysis resists this.
What is truly novel in this is the "recovery" (in a sense) of the importance of the Freudian unconscious. Despite Zizek fanatic devotion to Lacan, one of the important aspects of his analyses is a damning critique of the philosophies of accommodation. Habermas deliberative citizen is sadean... a citizen who engages in procedures of interrogation... like Butler's drag performer who always has to purchase new clothes... Is there not a resemblance here between Habermas, Butler, and Sade? Kant's postulate of the immortality of the soul, Butler's constant performativity, Sade's beautiful eternal body, and Habermas's unlimited communicative community... even Derrida's hauntology... whereby ghosts never rest and torture us the present with a spectral past... deconstruction forever! At least the Lacanians acknowledge that enjoyment should not be forgotten in politics! and that this comes like a double edged sword.
> so what is the new territory they're mapping? i keep
reading this stuff and i can't seem to locate any attempt to
answer this question.
First, I'm not sure that Lacanian social theorists are under orders to map new territory. I'm quite sure that these folks recognize that theory isn't cartography... following Hegelian themes... theory doesn't provide a map of the terrain, theory is part of that very map. This involves a paradox.
Let's say a journalist is present at the scene of an accident. They want to provide an objective account. If they describe the scene without their presence, then they've missed out on their objective existence. If, on the other hand, the journalist wants to include themself, they have to see things from outside of themselves... and this is impossible! (this is basically the paradox in set theory that Russell talks about). So the map becomes the terrain. This isn't new, but it is rare to find theorists that are sensitive to this.
The real substance of Zizek's account can be found in Tichlish Subjects - where he takes on everyone from Butler to Habermas. If Zizek isn't contributing anything new - then why is it possible for him to demolish everything from analytic philosophy and communicative action to pragmatism and postmodernism with a frankly immanent critique?
I'm just guessing here... but isn't this fairly new?
ken