Author: logocentric

political logics of equivalance and difference

In sum, the political logics of equivalence and difference comprise a descriptive framing devise which is derived from a particular understanding of discourse and the importance accorded to processes of signification.  They enhance our approach to social science explanation by furnishing us with a conceptual grammar with which to account for the dynamics of social change.  They help us show how social practices and regime are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

ontologically incomplete structures

So instead of prioritizing totalised and determining social structures on the one hand, or fully constituted subjects on the other, we begin by accepting that social agents always find themselves ’thrown’ into a system of meaningful practices. an immersion that both shapes their identity and structures their practices.  However, we also add the critical rider that these structures are ontologically incomplete.  Indeed, it is in the ’space’ or ‘gap’ of social structures, as they are rendered visible in moments of crisis and dislocation, that a political subject can emerge through particular ‘acts of identification’.  Moreover, as these identifications are understood to take place across a range of possible ideologies or discourses – some of which are excluded or repressed – and as these are always incomplete, then any form of identification is doomed to fall short of its promise

In sum, social structures and forms of life are not only composed of relations of hierarchy and domination; even more pertinently, they are marked by gaps and fissures, and forged by political exclusions.  And the making visible of these gaps in the structures through dislocatory experiences makes it possible for subjects to identify anew, and thus to act differently (79).

free decisions and actions are likened to miracles, which are characterized as an ability ‘to begin something new’, that is, to set in motion events and practices that cannot be controlled and whose consequences cannot be foretold. Indeed, echoing her once-mentor Heidegger, freedom involves the ‘abyss of nothingness that opens up before any deed than cannot be accounted for by a reliable chain of cause and effect and is inexplicable in Aristotelian categories of potentiality and actuality’ (Arendt cited in Zizek 2001:113) (79).

In short, following Heidegger, subjects are ‘thrown’ into a world not of their choosing, but have the capacity under certain conditions to act differently.  But more than this we need also to be able to explain the constitution and reproduction of the social relations into which they have been thrown, and we need also to account for the way in which subjects are gripped by certain discourses and ideologies. Our poststructuralist approach strives to unfold a social ontology adequate to these tasks.

pass through subjects

Methodologically we argue that the development of an explanation must start with intentions and self-interpretations, not only as part of the process of problematization, but also to arrive at an understanding of the character of social logics, as well as political and fantasmatic logics.  In conceptual terms, logics are aligned with self-interpretations against causal mechanisms, because it is through self-interpretations and thick descriptions that hte ontic is connected to the ontological, and social logics connected with political and fantasmatic logics (161).

impossiblity of fullness of being

[W]e draw heavily on … the disruptive presence of “the real” in any symbolic order, that is, the presence that marks the impossibility of any putative fullness of being, whether at the level of structures, subjects or discourses.  Moreover, the effect of our ontological framework is not only to destabilize the conditions upon which the standard models of social science are grounded, but also to provide the conditions for developing an alternative approach to social and political analysis that inter alia concedes a central role to subjectivity (as distinct from subjectivism) in characterizing, explaining and criticizing practices and regimes (11).

ontology of Lack

Influenced principally by Heidegger, Lacan, and Laclau and Mouffe, but also drawing on Foucault, Wittgenstein, and Derrida, we put forward an ‘ontology of lack’, which is a negative ontology premised on the radical contingency of social relations.  Stated simply, we take this axiom to imply that any system or structure of social relations is constitutively incomplete or lacking for a subject. … every social identity is always-already dislocated.  On the one hand we take this to be a strictly ontological understanding of dislocation, in which each and every symbolic order is penetrated by an impossibility that has to be filled or covered-over for it to constitute itself.  The category of dislocation can also be understood, however, in more ontical terms: moments in which the subject’s mode of being is disrupted by an experience that cannot be symbolized within and by the pre-existing means of discursive representation.  From this perspective, practices are governed by a dialectic defined by incomplete structures on the one hand, and the collective acts of subjective identification that sustain or change those incomplete structures on the other. (14)

self-interpretations

The reason social science explanation cannot be entirely reduced to the contextualized self-interpretations of the subjects under study is not simply because these are structured by broader social processes that are too complicated and complex in their interactions to grasp, but more fundamentally because social structures are themselves constitutively lacking.  But, again, the social structures making possible the subjects’ self-interpretations, and the limits of social structures themselves, are locatable and understandable only by identifying correlative limit experiences by passing through, and relating them explicitly to, the self-interpretations of subjects.  Lapses, bungled actions, and slips of tongue comprise examples of just such limits within the psychoanalytic domain (102).

Enjoyment

Enjoyment is not to be understood as a synonym for pleasure, if only because such enjoyment is often though by no means always consciously expereinced as suffering.

– accounts for a ‘symptom’s inertia’

The notion of enjoyment captures a subject’s mode of being, whether individual or collective

The guilt which may accompany the transgression of an officially affirmed ideal is a possible, indeed farily common, mode of experiencing enjoyment (107).

… the notion of enjoyment has been used to characterize and account for the resilience of a host of practices and rituals … In sum by invoking fantasmatic logics we suggest that one condition for subscribing to an existing or promised social practice concerns the extent to which it can tap into the subject’s exisitng mode of enjoyment and thus fantasmatic frame.

Laclau and Mouffe’s new theoretical grammar

… it is important to stress the way in which Laclau and Mouffe sought to construct the problem they encountered in terms of a ‘crisis of Marxism’, which had then to be resolved in a particular way.

… In sum, Laclau and Mouffe proposed a new theoretical grammar that was rooted in a particular ontological standpoint, which they used to render intelligible a series of recalcitrant empirical phenomena and strategic dilemmas confronting a particular intellectual tradition. In so doing, the logic of their approach partakes of a retroductive form of reasoning. But why should we accept their new theoretical grammar. What are the criteria for its acceptance? It is clear that in developing their new approach Laclau and Mouffe did not rely upon the standard positivist model of testing a set of falsifiable hypotheses against all empirical evidence so as to demonstrate their validity. As against positivism, with its rigid separation of discovery and testing, the answer as to why we could or should accept their intervention depends, first, upon a range of criteria, which are internal to the production of their theoretical approach itself and, second, upon a nexus of persuasive practices, and theoretical and strategic interventions, which are designed to convince a range of relevant communities of both their validity and strategic importance.

The internal criteria we can mobilize to evaluate their theoretical solution comprise the degree to which the new approach is able to render intelligible the anomalous phenomena that arose within the existing paradigms in a a way that was more plausible than rival attempts to resolve the crisis of Marxism; the consistency of its ontological presuppositions and theoretical claims; the fecundity of the research programme in identifying and addressing new possibilities of theoretical endeavour and empirical research; and the cogency and effectiveness of the critiqus developed in its name, coupled with the new ethical and political possibilities the new approach makes possible. In all these respects, it is our view that Laclau and Mouffe’s approach does indeed consitutte a valid project of theory construction, which successfully addresses many of the anomalies they confronted, thus disclosing new possibilities for research and intervention. IN fact, this book can be read a sattamept to make good this claim (43).

issue of class

Marx’s theory of class struggle can legitimately be understood as a response to the problem of collective agency in capitalist societies. However, the initial formulation of a theoretical (or, indeed, empirical) response to a problem may in certain respects be problematic: it may partake of an essentialist form of reasoning or may be ensnared in a reductionist framework. The aim of deconstruction in this regard is to lay bare these sorts of ambiguities and exclusions, thus weakening any essentializing projections into the concept and/or exploring repressed possibilities foreclosed by reductionist proclivities.  It may turn out, for example, that class struggles are only one form of collective agency amongst others; indeed, its particular embodiment may be overdetermined by other forms of struggle and identity, such as race, gender or ethnicity.  If this is the case (which we think it is), then a practice of commensuration is required to rework the theoretical concept so as to render it compatible with our ontological presuppositions, while the practice of articulation involves its reinscription in a new explanatory framework (181).

Thrown Subjects pt.2 Subject of Enjoyment

Practices of identity reproduction and new acts of identification also presuppose a subject of enjoyment that is structured around certain fantasies.  Fantasy is a narrative that covers-over or conceals the subject’s lack by providing an image of fullness, wholeness, or harmony, on the one hand, while conjuring up threats and obstacles to its realization on the other.  When successfully installed, a fantasmatic narrative hooks the subject ”via the enjoyment it procures” to a given practice or order, or a promised future practice or order, thus confering identity … the categories of enjoyment and fantasy are relevant for thinking about issues of ideology and ethics. (130)

difference between ethics and normative

Nevertheless, it is important in this regard to distinguish between our concept of ethics and our grounds for normative evaluation.  It will be recalled that for us ethics entails acknowledging the radical contingency of social existence and responding to its demands.  It is thus directly connected to the fundamental ontological commitments of our overall approach. By contrast, questions of normativity are directed at the concrete sets of social relations within which subjects find themselves, requiring the analyst to characterize those relations that are preceived to be oppressive or unfair in the name of alternative values or principles.  It is important here to stress that we concede a lexical priority to the ethical as against the normative … This has important implications because it means that our normative stances are always relative to the ultimate contingency of social relations and practices.  In other words, the norms and ideals that we project into our objects of study are intrinsically contingent, contestable and revisable.  Contingency necessarily penetrates the realm of the normative, which in turn indicates the need to develop a suitable ethos for conducting research.