Lacan and Political Subjectivity: Fantasy and Enjoyment in Psychoanalysis and Political Theory (original) (raw)
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Ideological Fantasy at Work: Toward a Psychoanalytic Contribution to Critical Political Economy
2008
This paper explores the normative and ideological significance of fantasy in the context of workplace practices. I first situate my approach to fantasy against the background of a 'logics approach' to social analysis, which is grounded in the poststructuralist and postmarxist genres of political theorizing. I then consider a number of existing analyses of workplace practices which appeal to the category of fantasy. My strategy here is to narrow the focus of my inquiry to those scholars who explicitly appeal to a Lacanian understanding of psychoanalysis and fantasy. I focus first on some studies in which fantasy can be said to play a role in sustaining workplace practices. I use this literature to draw out and formalize some basic features of the logic of fantasy, before turning my attention to a study which opens up a theoretical space for thinking about a mode of subjectivity which appears to escape the logic of fantasy. Finally, using the insights gleaned from these studies, I develop an analytical framework centred around the logic of fantasy. The benefit of this framework, I claim, is that it makes clear the analytical distinction between two dimensions of critique and transformation: a normative dimension and an ethical dimension. Making this distinction explicit, I argue, allows us to pose interesting theoretical, critical, and methodological questions, including how these two dimensions intersect in different contexts. The aim is to pluralize our understandings of social and political critique and transformation, in a way which is relevant (but not necessarily tied) to workplace practices.
Fantasy Fatigue: On Political Autopoiesis and the Administration of Enjoyment
Philosophy Today, 2023
Fantasies have the power in the very midst of political communities, consciously and unconsciously alike, to suppress internal antagonisms in times of crises. More specifically, they help to blur aporias of a community’s ideological structures by invoking a common sense that reconstitutes the community, similar to an act of religious conversion. Their impact on the “space of reasons” is analyzed in this article because fantasies, and specifically excessive and radical fantasies, suspend the game of giving and asking for reasons. They do so in order to ground premises of contestation in the background of communal reason via an emotional and secret “code” of what it means to be a “we.” Totalitarian, monarchical, and democratic societies need this “code” to purge society of the pure formalities of political reason, or, in other words: to get rid of fantasy fatigue. Key words: autopoiesis, enjoyment, fantasy, jouissance, scission, transgression
Fantasy and Identity in Critical Political Theory
Filozofski vestnik, 2011
In this essay I explore the appeal of the psychoanalytic category of fantasy for critical political theory, by which I mean a theory grounded in a political ontology that offers a rationale for both normative and ideological critique. I draw on the work of William Connolly, Susan Faludi, Jacqueline Rose, and Judith Butler, among others, to consider the explanatory and critical implications of the concept of fantasy for questions of identity, and political identity in particular. I argue that fantasy is a useful device with which to explore and probe the political and ideological aspects of a practice or narrative because it foregrounds the combined significance of the symbolic and affective dimensions of life. Moreover, a psychoanalytic perspective can facilitate a move away from an epistemological or moralizing understanding of fantasy and political identity, shifting the emphasis instead toward a more ontological and ethical understanding.
Fantasy as a Political Category
Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory [preprint], 2018
This chapter examines Žižek’s theorizations of ‘ideological fantasy’ and its different manifestations or veils (Žižek 1997: 1-35). We begin (part 1) by recalling the fundamental coordinates of Freud’s, then Lacan’s, conceptions of fantasy, allowing a theoretical lineage to be established which accounts for Žižek’s coaptation and extension of what was originally a clinical term. Part 2 then turns, in this light, to Žižek’s reformulation of ‘fantasy’ in the context of a post-Marxian theory of ideology. First, we pursue Žižek’s critique of the Marxist notion of ‘false consciousness’, by way of his famous analyses of ideological cynicism, into his theory of ideological disidentification, and the function of ideological fantasy in structuring groups’ quasi-transgressive forms of jouissance. Second, we look at Žižek’s analyses of sublime objects of ideology, and the function of ideological fantasy in papering over social antagonism or ‘the Real’ by constructing narratives of the loss or theft of jouissance. As an avenue for future research, we show just how well and powerfully Žižek’s theory allows us to comprehend contemporary Right-wing populism as an ideological formation.
Culture, Theory and Critique, 2018
Fantasies and especially excessive or ‘phantascistic’ fantasies, as they are referred to here, have the power to suppress within political communities, consciously and unconsciously alike, inner antagonisms in times of crisis. More precisely, they help to blur aporias within the ideological structures of a community through the evocation of a sensus communis (Kant) that establishes the community anew, similar to an act of religious conversion. Their impact on the space of reasons is analysed in this article as one that does not take part in the game of giving and asking for reasons, but operates in the background of communal reason via an emotionally and clandestine ‘code’ of what it means to be ‘We … – We who we are’. Next to theoretical elaborations of how and why these phantascistic fantasies are produced, the theory will be further explained through a series of exemplifications demonstrating the way that it has played out across a long history of conflict in the Middle East and a shorter history of contemporary politics in the United States. Through all of this, the aim is to illustrate how very concrete excessive fantasies have an impact on a body politic’s form of enjoyment. Key-words: Political Enjoyment, normative orders, 'nightly law', sensus communis, Eichmann-trial, jouissance
On the Ideological and Political Significance of Fantasy in the Organization of Work
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2011
As a site of wealth creation, work receives critical attention in many disciplines and from the point of view of a wide range of traditions of thought. In this paper I explore some themes relating to work and the organization of work from a psychoanalytic point of view. Drawing inspiration from the work of Lacanian scholars and others, I suggest that there are advantages to organizing such an exploration around the category of fantasy, specifically in highlighting the ideological and political significance of the way work practices are organized and understood. I also suggest that aspects of this approach demand further development to make more convincing the critical explanations it offers of workplace phenomena.
Journal of Political Ideologies, 2008
This paper explores the normative and ideological significance of fantasy in the context of workplace practices. I situate my approach to fantasy against the background of a ‘logics approach’ to social analysis, which is grounded in the post-structuralist and post-marxist genres of political theorizing. In considering a number of existing analyses of workplace practices which appeal to the category of fantasy, I focus on some studies in which fantasy can be said to play a role in sustaining workplace practices. I use this literature to draw out and formalize some basic features of the logic of fantasy, before turning my attention to a study which opens up a theoretical space for thinking about a mode of subjectivity which appears to escape the constraining logic of fantasy. Finally, using the insights gleaned from these studies, I develop an analytical framework centred around the logic of fantasy. The benefit of this framework, I claim, is that it makes clear the analytical distinction between two aspects of critique and transformation: an aspect linked to the norms of a practice and an aspect linked to the way subjects engage with those norms. Making this distinction explicit, I argue, allows us to pose interesting theoretical, critical, and methodological questions, including how these two aspects intersect in different contexts. The aim is to pluralize understandings of social and political critique and transformation, in a way which is relevant (but not necessarily tied) to workplace practices.
ON DESIRES AND PLEASURES: POLITICS AND TRANSGRESSIONS.
The questions of Desires and Pleasures are raised within the sphere of media and these desires and pleasures centres around the Lacanian concept of the Jouissance. Media, written and verbal, reflects the consumer ideology, where the consumers are made to receive and swallow whatever is fed to them. The question of desire and pleasure is of primary importance when we start perceiving media culture seriously. How pleasure is induced from the visual semiotic system? What all are the desires involved in it? These are the fundamental questions about media culture, involving the both media. Desire starts to take place in the margins where demand becomes separated from our need. Our drives, in this context become particular/partial manifestations of a single force called desires. The interpellation of the visual and written semiotics of media articulates the sexual identities into patriarchal/heterosexual conventions. Capitalism on the other side detotalizes the whole meaning constructions within the framework of media semiotics. It is within this context of labor and sexual roles we start deconstructing the whole politics of narration. This paper tries to analyze the concepts of desires and pleasures within the public sphere of media and what pleasures and desires constitute our present communicative actions. How this becomes a violence on the image of sexual identities? If so then, what is desire and pleasure in real.
What Is “Enjoyment as a Political Factor”?
Political Psychology, 2017
The notion of 'enjoyment as a political factor' is a key motif in Lacanian psychoanalytic social theory. This paper explores the notion of enjoyment/jouissance-a type of 'negative pleasure' or intense libidinal arousal-as an instrument of political analysis. Crucial here are a series of qualifications that refine an understanding of the concept. The paper clarifies that enjoyment is: sexual (or libidinal) in nature; bodily rather than unconscious; necessarily excessive (inasmuch as it is 'beyond the pleasure principle' and linked to the functioning of the death-drive); and illicit, incurred in acts that apparently transgress laws or socially prescribed limits. A series of critical arguments are noted, such as the idea that jouissance cannot be extrapolated to the level of the social, and the contention that as 'extra-discursive', modes of enjoyment float free of the symbolic. Contrary to such contentions, I offer a series of examples-most typically of racism-to demonstrate how jouissance: occurs within the symbolic; implies a dialectic of possession; involves the functioning of the law and superego; entails particular rules and contracts of enjoyment; is structured by fantasy. Jouissance understood in these ways necessarily supports and extend social structure.
The grip of ideology: a Lacanian approach to the theory of ideology
Journal of Political Ideologies, 2001
Is it possible to say something about how an ideology grips subjects that goes beyond today's sophisticated accounts of how particular socio-political traditions have been contingently constituted? This paper explores how a Lacanian conceptual framework provides the resources with which to offer an affirmative response to this question. In outlining such a response, I rely on Slavoj Žižek's political re-articulations of psychoanalytic categories and on Ernesto Laclau's hegemonic approach to ideology. I begin by situating the hegemonic approach to ideology in the context of other contemporary approaches. I then offer a reading which suggests that Ẑiẑek's Lacanian approach can be seen as a particular version of the hegemonic approach to ideology. Crucial to the former are the concepts of desire, fantasy, and enjoyment. I suggest that a Lacanian theory of ideology offers us a set of concepts drawn from the clinic that provoke interesting insights for the analysis and critique of ideology.