Jodi Dean has a very interesting post over at I Cite on what holds discursive communities– especially academic communities –together, and what is required to critique these communities. There she writes,
The same holds when one talks about political theory. In American political science, theorists are a separate subfield and generally treated as separate by the rest of the discipline. We are sometimes considered a field among ourselves, perhaps because we read Aristotle and Hobbes while the others think that politics can be a science and try to find formal models that do something besides stating the obvious. Yet, political theorists disagree among ourselves. A big division is between those who do a kind of analytic political theory–or who are still oriented toward Rawls–and those who do continental. Yet, among continental theorists there are also huge debates and disagreements. The Habermasians don’t read Deleuze or Zizek (not to mention Ranciere, Laclau, Agamben, or Badiou). And, while I’m on a journal with a bunch of Deleuzians, they are generally non-sympathetic to Zizek (they think he is not immanent enough and that the notion of the lack is both dangerous and wrong).
Can it mean anything, then, to reject or criticize political theory as a whole? If one is a formal modeler, yes. One is saying that only with formal methods can anything significant be said about politics. But, this is not a critique. It is simply a rejection. I don’t critique formal modeling in my work. I simply reject it. I find it uninteresting and irrelevant. (I’ll add that I do think there is an important role for a lot of empirical political science although I don’t do that sort of work myself.)
Ray Davies makes an interesting point in a thread over at faucets and pipes:
Words aren’t solid tokens which can be extracted from one game and used in a different game while meaning the same thing. Precise definitions are important when rationally arguing against a supposedly rational argument, but can be toxic to community formation, as I’ve personally seen in attempts to establish the boundaries of “science fiction” or “poetry”. A social term is, finally, defined socially, and, in healthily varied communities, allows for unpredictable outliers.
I agree. Terms are markers of discursive communities.
So, can one criticize an entire discursive community by invoking one of their terms? Yes, if one is rejecting the community per se. Here one would be making an institutional argument, that is, an argument about the group existing as a group. But one would not be addressing any of the discursive content through which the group is constituted. Why–because it is precisely the contestation over the content that designates membership in the group. (This is why I never take a stand on alien abduction or 9/11 truth; that would constitute me as a member of the group/discursive community I’m trying to understand.)
I don’t have a whole lot to add to her post; however, in addition to these discursive factors of how a master-signifier is attached to a specific set of signifiers (S2’s) for this or that variant of feminism or variant of Lacanians or group of political theorists, it seems to me that we should also include a discussion of jouissance, or the particular form of enjoyment that bounds a community together. This would include not just the way the community itself enjoys, but also the manner in which the community perceives other groups enjoying and seeks to defend against this enjoyment… That is, the shared fantasy of the group pertaining to how the Other illegitimately enjoys.
For a good portion of my academic career I’ve been in the uncomfortable position of having my foot in the door of two very different and heterogeneous academic orientations– Lacanian thought and Deleuzian thought. From the standpoint of Deleuzian orientations, Lacanian and psychoanalytic thought is often situated in having the wrong orientation towards jouissance, by celebrating lack and castration, rather than joyous becoming, affirmation, and creativity. Psychoanalysis is treated as a dangerous “Oedipalizing” orientation of thought that needs to be demolished, and this attribution of a specific sort of jouissance to psychoanalysis helps to bind Deleuzians together in a community under the master-signifier “Deleuze and Guattari”, even where this master-signifier “Deleuze and Guattari” is attached to radically different S2’s or secondary signifiers. So long as the danger of psychoanalysis is recognized, differences in the “interpretants” of the master-signifier “Deleuze and Guattari” don’t matter all that much. A similar phenomenon can also often be detected among Lacanian orientations of thought, or more recently among criticisms of Badiou, where Badiou’s style and tone become objects of criticism– i.e., his specific mode of jouissance in writing, rather than his explicit claims.
For me the question then becomes less one of how we can fix a discursive universe which is always changing anyway, but rather how we might strategically respond to formations of jouissance inhabiting a discursive universe that function to solidify that universe even though this jouissance is seldom explicitly there in the text. What would a form of critical engagement look like that takes this jouissance factor into account. Such a position wouldn’t simply seek to locate the jouissance at work in other discourses, but also the jouissance in one’s own discourse as perceived by the Other, seeking to sacrifice this jouissance or demonstrate that we don’t have it. For instance, it is clear that right-wing conservative discourses are often premised on the belief that the Other somehow has this enjoyment and has stolen it. What might be a form of discourse that would challenge this assumption and the ressentiment that attends it?
Larval Subjects . 
February 6, 2007 at 1:07 am
It’s an interesting question:
What would a form of critical engagement look like that takes this jouissance factor into account. Such a position wouldn’t simply seek to locate the jouissance at work in other discourses, but also the jouissance in one’s own discourse as perceived by the Other, seeking to sacrifice this jouissance or demonstrate that we don’t have it.
I’ve thought about this kind of thing a great deal, both in relation to conflict-resolution style work I’ve done from time to time, and in relation to writing effectively across theoretical traditions. Certainly in the in-person contexts of a conflict-resolution process, there are ways of conducting or comporting yourself that dissolve at least the dynamic tension within a situation, to some degree, by simply failing to participate in whatever dynamic would be required to fall in line with someone’s expectations: someone comes in primed for a fight, striking out and expecting to be struck – when this isn’t mirrored, it has a deflating effect, perhaps a confusing effect to some degree – which then opens up a space for a different kind of communication. It requires a kind of stepping aside from the interaction, rather than – in the first instance, at least – a participation in the interaction: creating a situation in which the other person eventually realises that they are, in effect, interacting with themselves…
Translating this to writing I find much more difficult – the available lines of communication are flattened and channeled – there are far fewer opportunities to signal how you are, and aren’t, participating. And, of course, I’m more likely to write on issues where I have a stronger interest in the discussion, so I’m far more likely to get in my own way… One of the things that does strike me, though – and here I’m speaking about theoretical traditions – are the palpable charges that attach to particular concepts or analytical strategies. These charges generally point to something outside the direct line of argument – to a political goal, perhaps, or to an organising principle of an approach – such that contestations around a small issue come to be experienced as bound together with something much vaster. Identifying these charges – trying to move the discussion into a more direct consideration of the stakes or the ways in which specific issues in contention are experienced to be bound together with others – can sometimes unlock particular disputes, as stakes can often be pursued in other ways, and issues are often not as closely bound as they seem, and it can be possible to translate the discussion onto another terrain.
This kind of writing strategy, though, requires interlocutors who share a certain amount in common – with stakes not too skewed from one another – and requires time and persistence and commitment to the value of a discussion, etc. Without these things, written interventions can still of course have an impact in an a more mediated way – not on the people actually involved in an engagement, but on others watching alongside or reading in the future, who are slightly less enmeshed in the terms of the debate. If this broader audience of onlookeers is the intended target, it might also then help to think about the sorts of things that can cause a form of thought to resonate with those not sufficiently committed to join in the fray, but within the sort of gravitational pull of a political movement: what are their stakes – what are they afraid they will lose, or what do they believe they gain, from their looser affiliation with a movement? What are the perceived stakes that prevent a stronger affiliation?
Nothing particularly profound in anything I’m offering here – just thinking out loud.
February 6, 2007 at 1:11 am
Technical side note: maybe an inclosed italics or emphasis tag at the end of your post?
February 6, 2007 at 1:59 am
N.P., just a brief response as things are extremely hectic at the moment– grading galore and annoying publishing things (which I’m happy to be suffering) –but I think what you refer to as a “charge” hits the nail on the head. In the more artificial communities we occupy in the world of theory it is interesting to observe how certain names and signifiers take on a sort of libidinal significance that tends to undermine the possibility of dialogue and discussion. Over at Long Sunday right now there’s been an extensive discussion in relation to Jodi’s post discussed here that has somehow devolved into a discussion of whether one should be for or against theory. Or that’s what the discussion appears to be about. I’ve never been able to figure out what Theory is– though allegedly I participate in it –what is non-theory, and what the stakes of this entire discussion are. Consequently, in a very real sense the term “Theory” itself is possessed or inhabited by a charge for those seeking to distinguish themselves by theory.
In our own discussions, this has come up from time to time when you evoke “Habermas”. I never think about Habermas. I’m not often around enthusiasts of Habermas. Nor is Habermas a major point of reference for me. Yet somehow simply hearing the signifier “Habermas” is like waving a red flag in front of my face. Now I can muster all sorts of arguments as to why I have issues with Habermas, but when you get right down to it this signifier simply is, for whatever reason, charged. That charge functions to organize all sorts of lines of force unfolding in a discussion from my end and is almost like an invisible force that causes the patterns of discourse to bend and distort themselves in ways that are difficult to understand.
The metaphor I like to use is the shift in the planet Mercury produced by its proximity to the sun that can’t be understood according to classical Newtonian laws, or the way in which we detect the presence of a planet in another solar system by noting the wobble of a star (especially in binary stellar systems with two stars). In both of these cases something essentially invisible causes a shift in the regular order of things and this seems to be the case where jouissance is concerned in the organization of communities. The problem is then that there’s really no reliable was to detect these j-factors a priori as they function in a discursive community prior to stepping on them… Like land mines. This really is the aspect of discourse that fascinates me as I’ve so often been guilty of it myself and because I see it so commonly out there in both academic discourses and non-academic discourses. For years I participated on a variety of academic discussion lists and perhaps one of my primary traumas from this experience– that really was, all round, a good experience –was how these little pools of jouissance diffracted discourse in a variety of ways. Just try to go on a Deleuze list and discuss Lacan or Hegel in a favorable way and see what happens. Or jump on a Lacan list and discuss an ego psychologist such as Lowenstein. The results are illuminating. My first shift to the world of blogging was through prominent political blogs such as Dailykos, Americablog, and R*dst*te, where once again I saw the same phenomenon at work. What was at issue wasn’t so much a determinate set of claims that one rejected as a series of charges that organized key signifiers around which the community organized themselves. R*dst*te is particularly illuminating in this regard, as conservatives are proud of the way in which they are a “big tent”, composed of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, religious conservatives, and libertarians. Here, I think, is something that directly contradicts Jodi’s claims and which is common to the world of various academic orientations as well: What unites conservatives is not so much a shared platform– though that is there somewhat –but shared jouissances. There’s very little resemblance between the platform of a libertarian and a social conservative, yet they can still be united around certain charged signifiers populating the social field. Similarly, among Hegelians interpretations can be radically different, but there’s an opposition against certain charged phenomena that nonetheless unites them.
So I guess I’m lamely repeating my original question. For me one of the primary traumas, one that I experience again and again, is why sound argument and discourse are not themselves sufficient, or why persuasion doesn’t work. There’s another factor at work that binds people together and to particular positions. How does one strategize, to pick up on the metaphor of Mecury again, with regard to distortions in the very fabric of space-time as it pertains to discourse and social organizations? In what way is it possible to effect shifts in distributions of jouissance or to effect separation. I know the answer to this question with regard to the clinic, but the broader social world is another matter entirely.
February 6, 2007 at 2:11 am
Would there be there different strategic responses based upon the discourse around which the community is organized? The position of the subject and the relationship to objet a could identify methods of effective engagement, difference approaches depening upon a group typified by Master, University, etc.
I wonder if these communities coalesce due less to common ground on subject matter/content and more for the personal need to connect with a sympathetic discourse.
February 6, 2007 at 5:49 pm
PEBird, I think this is exactly right. Presumably the organization of jouissance is going to differ from social system to social system, so analysis will have to be tailored to its object and strategies will have to be specific to the organization of the system in question. This is one of the reasons I’ve been interested in Adorno and Hegel lately, as while I don’t agree with either entirely to the letter, both strike me as attempting to articulate modes of immanent analysis and critique that avoid simply foisting theoretical apparati from afar or externally. N.P. has developed these themes far more than me.
On the issue of coalescing more due to a need to find a sympathetic community than subject matter, I think you’re on to something here. Zizek argues that we first identify with a particular master-signifier and only subsequently attach it to other signifiers that fill out its meaning. The master-signifier has a sort of sublime dimension that is without content of its own. I’ve increasingly come to think about religion in these sorts of terms. From one perspective, approaching a religious community from the standpoint of its theological content strikes me as misguided in the sense that this thematic content functions as a sort of supplement that followers themselves are often unaware of. Rather, socially religion often functions simply as the set of practices engaged by the group: Drink this, eat that, kneel now, say this, celebrate on this day, etc. Indeed, in certain circumstances, discussion of the concrete theology can even be experienced as traumatic– “You mean that’s what this is all about?” Here membership in the group seems to be more about identification with the signifier as such, “Pentacostal”, for instance, the set of practices, and the community formed around these practices rather than anything having to do with thematic content. This would be why there can be such a disjunct between thematic content and what the group believes.
I sometimes worry over this in my own case with regard to my academic identifications. At a certain level my Lacanian turn was simply the result of having been received much more warmly by the Lacanian community (which is also more active and organized) than among the so-called “Deleuzian community”. It’s hard to resist suddenly being made a board member of one of the central organizations of psychoanalysis in the United States and to being given all sorts of opportunities to publish, present, and talk to others interested in the same issues. To what degree, then, were the theoretical positions I would later come to adopt simply a product of finding a particular community and learning the “passwords”?
February 7, 2007 at 5:19 am
Obviously different members of an organization use different discourses depending on where they stand politically in their group and how conscious they are of that position. I find that the sincere members of religious organizations (not theological – no criticism intended here just observation) tend to respond to the Master Discourse – but I sense this push by the leaders to change to a University Discourse.
I’ve been listening to popular Christian radio in the car while here in Texas (don’t ask) – and there is this very clear attempt by the broadcasters to shift the dialogue to something like a New Age-ish advice with a dash of pop psychology added. There is a big push on knowledge (everyone has to have a Bible quote at hand) but not just Bible knowledge, practical knowledge – with every personal problem having a pointer back to the source, as opposed to obvious appeals to authority.
I wonder how successful that transition will be, as many who join these organizations may be looking for that master.
When it comes to the academic communities, I find them either talking as Analysts (very rare), or more likely as perverts.
With regard to your own worries – you need to shift into drive. Do what you are going to do and don’t worry if it any good or not – you’ll find out soon enough and fix it to make it not so worse, or to make it better.