The new issue of the IJZS, Žižek and Lacan, is now available online. My article introduces a new Lacanian concept (universes of discourse), as well as four new discourses (the discourse of the capitalist, the discourse of biopower, the discourse of immaterial labor, and the discourse of critical theory), showing how Žižek’s mode of engagement is distinguished from psychoanalytic clinical engagement. In addition to that, the appendix develops the other possible 16 permutations of Lacan’s discourse theory. Here’s the abstract:
Žižek’s New Universe of Discourse: Politics and the Discourse of the Capitalist (warning pdf)
Levi R. Bryant
In what way is the thought of Slavoj Žižek to be distinguished from that of Jacques Lacan? This paper argues that the thought of Lacan and Žižek are to be distinguished at the level of the formal structure of discourse. Although Žižek often situates his own theoretical project in terms of the discourse of the analyst, his work occupies an uneasy place in this position insofar as the discourse of the analyst is directed at the singularity of the subject’s symptom, rather than shared political causes. Drawing on his “Milan Discourse” where Lacan presents the discourse of the capitalist, this paper argues that Žižek discourse inhabits the universe of capitalism, rather than the universe of mastery. Through the development of a modified version of Lacan’s discourse of the capitalist, it is shown that it is possible to derive three additional discourses– the discourse of biopower, the discourse of immaterial labor, and the discourse of critical theory –from the initial discourse of the capitalist. A psychoanalytic approach to these discourses using Lacanian discourse theory goes beyond standard accounts of biopolotical production and immaterial labor by revealing the function of the unconscious and real at work in these discourses, thereby opening new possibilities of engagement. Žižek’s theoretical project is shown to be an important cartography of this new universe of discourse, revealing both how the discourses inhabiting this universe contain certain constitutive deadlocks and devising strategies for engagement where the foe– due to the disappearance of the master and new forms of capitalism that can no longer be properly situated in terms of the discourse of the university –is no longer entirely clear.
Other Contributors:
Žižek: silence and the real desert
Rob Weatherill
Female Rivals: Feminism, Lacan & Žižek try to think of something new to say
Kareen Ror Malone
On Reading Žižek: Notes for Lacanian Clinicians (or what to do when a little bit of Žižek gets stuck in the throat)
Carol Owens
Embracing the Paradox: Zizek’s Illogical Logic
Sheila Kunkle
Lacan after Žižek: Self-Reflexivity in the Automodern Enjoyment of Psychoanalysis
Robert Samuels
Happy New Years!
January 1, 2009 at 7:19 pm
[…] (Via Larval Subjects.) […]
January 2, 2009 at 12:05 am
congrats–it’s a good paper, clear, well-written, a good opportunity for thought. I haven’t said anything about it yet because I’m still chewing it over; I’m not sure I’m convinced by your new formulae but I don’t know why; often my resistances end up not being justifiable. Likewise, I’m reading Adrian Johnston’s book on drive. It’s excellent; like your work, his is also thorough and clear. I’m not sure, though, that I’m convinced by his account of split drives into axes or lines of iteration and alteration. But, again, my resistance may not be worth much…still, a terrific paper that should be read by anyone interested in Lacanian theory.
January 2, 2009 at 5:51 am
Many thanks, Jodi! If the paper generates discussion, then it will have been a success.
January 2, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I thought the paper was well written, too, and kept me engaged the whole time. I will be thinking of it for a while. It would have been interesting to see you bring up Zizek’s spin on “totality” when you brought up the politics of totality and imaginary wholeness.
January 3, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Good paper! Wonderfully clear, as always. I really enjoyed your exegesis on the discourse of the capitalist. Glad you looked at it in terms of both production and consumption. However, I felt that the engagement with D&G could have been deeper, especially in light of your fascinating posts linking schizoanalsyis and psychoanalysis. For instance, the discourse of the master certainly resembles the despotic socius). I feel that you over-emphasise the extent to which the capital embraces difference, given that it only embraces it in order to reduce it to same, to generalised equivalence. Capitalist nation states have invariably reacted with immense and intense hostility to the emergence of different ways of organising society and distributing our abundant resources. I feel we should never lose sight of questions of how the discourse of the master serve to support capitalism (and vice-cersa)? How are they co-implicated with one another? To what extent has the category of ‘the economy’ itself become an unquestionble master? As I’m sure you would agree, capital hasn’t simply replaced prior forms of domination and control, it continues to use them as a bulwark against absolute deterritorialisation. I found the section on the ‘discourse of immaterial labour’ immensely rich, and I will have have to reread it in order to digest it. I got less out of the section on biopower, but that’s probably because I’ve always had deep reservations about the concept itself. The final section on critical theory could have done with some consideration of the importance of Sloterdijk for Zizek. I generally find that people recognise that they are unfree, are deeply cynical about politicians and bankers, and are aware of the horrifying violence that capital inflicts on the environment and their communities. However, they are equally cynical about the possibility of enacting any sort of substantive change (quite rightly, perhaps, given the absence of any emancipatory mass movement in the overdeveloped world), and therefore unwilling to stick their heads above the parapet.
Few typos I noticed in the first few pages:
2 vel for veil?
3 co-terminus for coterminous
4 pathalogical for pathological
6 Ranciere for Rancière
7 the discourse of the hysteric twice. should have discourse of the university.
January 4, 2009 at 5:59 am
Speaking of the Discourse of Immaterial Labour, I wondered whether you (Sinthome) had considered Adorno’s work on The Culture Industry as a fore-runner to this more formal recognition.
January 5, 2009 at 2:53 am
Wednesday 19 & Thursday 20 September 2007
Conference
‘The Triumph of Religion’
Lacanian perspectives on (a)theology
At a press conference in Rome , in 1974, when asked for his opinion of the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, Lacan promptly replied: “In the end, it is either the one, or the other.” His reply to the following question – “Which, then, will win the battle?” – is less prompt. He finally ventures that “Religion will never wane.” Religion, he adds, will “triumph.” After a moment of doubt, he feels compelled to say the opposite about psychoanalysis: psychoanalysis will certainly not triumph, at best it will survive for a while. Is this passage symptomatic of the numerous references to religious and theological issues in Lacan’s oeuvre? On the one hand, Lacan severely criticises religion and defends the greatness of modern atheism; on the other hand, his references to theological issues and schemes are so crucial a part of his theory that one is inclined to consider it an ‘a-theology’, and, as such, still an instance of theology. What is Lacan’s view of religion? And what do his reflections on religion tell about his theory and contemporary critical theory in general? Taking these two questions as guide, the conference explores how Lacanian theory deals with the current revival (or persistence) of religion and with religious fundamentalism. Lacan’s difficulty in replying to the current ‘triumph of religion’ might shed light on the incapacity of current critical thought in general to deal with that question.
Programme
flyer: click here
Wednesday 19 September
09.30 – 10.00 Registration & coffee
10.00 – 10.30 Dominiek Hoens (Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht, NL)
Introduction: Lacan’s Atheism
10.30 – 11.45 Marc De Kesel (Radboud University Nijmegen, NL)
“Oh my God”: Monotheistic Criticism and the Anthropological Basis of Religion
11.45 – 13.00 Kenneth Reinhard (University of California LA, USA)
There is Something of One (God): Lacan and Political Theology
14.00 – 15.15 Adrian Johnston (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA)
Conflicted Matter: Jacques Lacan and the Challenge of Secularizing Materialism
15.15 – 16.30 Mahdi Tourage (Colgate University NY, USA)
The Efficacy of Lacan’s Theory of Signification as a New Approach to the Hermeneutics of Sufi Texts
16.45 – 18.00 Samo Tomšic (Institute for Philosophy Ljubljana, SL)
Lacan’s Antireligious Act: The Lessons of Dissolution and the Invention of the Real
18.00 drinks
Thursday 20 September
10.30 – 11.45 Lara Sels and Nadia Sels (University of Ghent, BE)
Lacan and Gregory of Nyssa: A Communal Myth?
11.45 – 13.00 Charles Shepherdson (Tsinghua University, CN)
On the Sacrifice of Isaac: Fear and Anxiety from Kant to Lacan
14.00 – 15.15 Tiers Bakker (University of Amsterdam, NE)
The Unconscious God in the Work of Lacan
15.15 – 16.30 Zachary Rosenau (Independent Researcher, Philadelphia, USA)
Lacan and Barth: Theology to the Letter with Continual Reference to American Comedians
16.45 – 18.00 Marcus Pound (Durham University, UK)
The Assumption of Desire, Lacan, Kierkegaard and the Eucharist
18.00 drinks
Respondents: Erik Borgman, Thomas Brockelman, Chris Gemerchak, Dominiek Hoens, André Nusselder, Georgios Papadopoulos, Johan Schokker, Aaron Schuster, Frank Vande Veire
Admission charge: 1 day: 15 € / 10 € (students); 2 days: 25 € / 15 € (students)
Conference location: Radboud University, Huize Heyendaal, Geert Grootplein 9, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Please do register with: madeleine.bisscheroux@janvaneyck.nl
January 6, 2009 at 12:48 pm
dr sinthome i just saw that the researchers of jan van eyck receive around 7,000 euro in annual stipends for fulltime research, which divided by 12 comes out to round 680 per month – the amount of social assistance. this means that if they’re not practising professors doing this as a side dish they might just as well be sitting on the dole. you really have to love Lacan’s influence on the Sufi cultures, to undergo this sort of an ordeal.
January 7, 2009 at 8:11 pm
August 10, 2010 at 7:49 pm
[…] has pointed out, they do not refer to motives but to subjective forms. Like the agent slot in Lacan’s theory of discourse, figures in this bestiary are positions that an agent can occupy. In other words, the bestiary […]
July 11, 2012 at 1:09 am
[…] of the capitalist, that no longer fits with the discourse of the master. A few years ago, I demonstrated that there are not 4 discourses, but actually 24; though 16 of them might remain virtual or […]