equivalence – objet (a)

dislocation and identity

Discourse Theory in European Politics., Howarth, David and Jacob Torfing, 2005 Palgrave.

The dislocation of the discursive structure means that the subject always emerges as a split subject that might attempt to reconstruct a full identity through acts of identification. … When it comes to the theory of the subject, post-structuralism has retained a rather structuralist view that threatens to reduce the subject to an objective location within the discursive structure … The idea that the subject simultaneoulsy occupies the position of being a worker, a woman, an environmentalist, and so on, might help us to combat class reductionism, but provides an inadequate understanding of the processes that lead to the formation of multiple selves. Here, the notion of dislocation provides a fruitful starting point.

The recurrent dislocations of the discursive system mean that the subject cannot be conceived in terms of a collection of structurally given positions. The discursive structure is disrupted and this prevents it from fully determining the identity of the subject. The does not mean we have to reintroduce an ahistorical subjectivity that is given outside the structure. The subject is internal to the structure, but it has neither a complete structural identity nor a complete lack of structural identity. Rather it is a failed structural identity. Because of dislocation, the subject emerges as a split subject, which is traumatized by its lack of fullness. The split subject might either disintegrate or try to recapture the illusion of a full identiy by means of identifying itself with the promise of fullness offered by different political projects. Hence a dislocated Russion party functionary might aim to reconstitute a full identity by identifying with the promise of Russion nationalism, neoliberalism, social democracy, or some religious movement. The split subject might identify with many different things a the same time. In this situation the hegemonic struggles will have to offer ways of articulating the different points of identification into a relatively coherent discourse. Social antagonism will play a crucial role for the attempt to unify dissimilar points of identification. The construction of a constitutive outside facilitates the displacement of responsibility for the split subject’s lack onto an enemy, which is held responsible for all evil. The externalization of the subject’s lack to an enemy is likely to fuel political action that will be driven by an illusionary promise: that the elimination of the other will remove the subject’s original lack 17.

butler on laclau

We might ask: what form of identification mobilizes the bid for marriage, and what form mobilizes its opposition, and are they radically distinct?

Those who seek marriage identify not only with those who have gained the blessing of the state, but with the state itself. Thus the petition not only augments state power, but accepts the state as the necessary venue for democratization itself.

Indeed, the task will be not to assimilate the unspeakable into the domain of speakability in order to house it there, within the existing norms of dominance, but to shatter the confidence of dominance, to show how equivocal its claims to universality are, and, from that equivocation, track the break-up of its regime, an opening towards alternative versions of universality that are wrought from the work of translation itself. Such an opening will not only relieve the state of its privileged status as the primary medium through which the universal is articulated, but re-establish as the conditions of articulation itself the human trace that formalism has left behind, the left that is Left (179).

zizek rejects logic of equivalence

On should not forget that in spite of some occasional ‘objectivist’ formulations, the reduction of individuals to embodied economic categories (terms of the relation of production) is for Marx not a simple fact, but the result of the process of ‘reification’, that is, an aspect of the ideological ‘mystification’ inherent to capitalism. As for Laclau’s second point about class struggle being ‘just one species of identity politics, one which is becoming less and less important in the world in which we live’, one should counter it by the already-mentioned paradox of ‘oppositional determination’, of the part of the chain that sustains its horizon itself; class antagonism certainly appears as one in the series of social antagonisms, but it is simultaneously the specific antagonism which ‘predominates over the rest whose relations thus assign rank and influence to the others. It is a general illumination which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity‘.

[M]y point of contention with Laclau here is that I do not accept that all elements which enter into hegemonic struggle are in principle equal: in the series of struggles (economic, political, feminist, ecological, ethnic, etc.) there is always ONE which, while it is part of the chain, secretly overdetermines its very horizon (320).

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).

UK Audit Regime Fantasmatic Logic

… given the broader social context in which they operate. .. give a wider discursive context in which a culture of instrumentalist consumption and exchange dominates, it is not fanciful to suppose that key signifiers which exhibit a clearly positive valence for subjects, whether they are ‘quality’, ‘professionalism’, ‘knoledge’, ‘excellence’ or ‘freedom’, should be suitably rearticulated to better resonate with the market ethos (177).

Given a dislocation, and the drawing of a political frontier via logics of equivalence, key terms acquire the status of ‘floating signifiers’ — signifiers that for relevant subjects are no longer fixed to a particular meaning. Once detached, they begin to ‘float’, and their identity is only (partially) stabilized when they are successfully hegemonized by groups that endeavour to naturalize meaning in one way rather than another.

By criticizing universities for failing the economy throughout the 1980s, accusing academics of being snobbishly out of touch with the real world, and by painting a general picture of higher education as overly bureaucratic and inefficient in the face of an imminent and threateningly aggressive global market, ‘modernizers’ facilitate the processes by which certain key signifiers are detached from their signifieds and rearticulated to reinforce market-friendly equivalences.

Laclau’s article: Why do empty signifiers matter to politics?

Enjoyment of closure

While political logics can be resolved into two main components — the logics of equivalence and difference — the logic of fantasy is defined solely by the function of closure. Moreover, in concealing — suturing or closing off — the contingency of social relations, fantasy structures the subject’s mode of enjoyment in a particular way: let us call it an ‘enjoyment of closure’. Thus, ethics is directly linked to the logic of fantasy because, whatever its ontical instantiation, the latter (fantasy) has closure as its principle of intelligibility, whereas ethics is related to the ‘traversal’ of fantasy in the name of an openness to contingency corresponding to an ‘enjoyment of openness’. For us, then, fantasy and ethics pick out the subject as a subject of enjoyment. though social practices are capacious enough from our point of view to enable us to capture those aspects in which subjects are attentive to the radical contingency of social relations, it should be clear that fantasmatic logics are operative in social practices where the ideological dimension is foregrounded. however, we have also seen that fantasmatic logics are equally operative in political practices. But whereas political logics are used to explain the discursive shifts in the wake of a dislocatory moment, fantasmatic logics describe and account for the vector and modality of those discursive shifts, capturing the way in which the subject deals with the radical contingency of social relations as a subject of enjoyment (151-2).

Hegemony

Given a dislocation, and the status of ‘floating signifiers’ — signifiers that for relevant subjects are no longer fixed to a particular meaning. Once detached, they begin to ‘float’, and their identity is only (partially) stabilized when they are successfully hegemonized by groups that endeavour to naturalize meaning in one way rather than another (177).

By criticizing universities for failing the economy throughout the 1980s, accusing academics of being snobbishly out of touch with the real world, and by painting a general picture of higher education as overly bureaucratic and inefficient in the face of an imminent and threateningly aggressive global market, ‘modernizers’ facilitate the process by which certain key signifiers are detached from their signifieds and rearticulated to reinforce market-friendly equivalences (177).

Logic of equivalence, Logic of difference

In thinking about the link between political and fantasmatic logics we could say that the articulation of fantasy and the political dimension varies, depending on whether or not the equivalential or differential aspects of a discursive construction predominate (150).

The predominance of the LOE, in which the articulation of political discourse is dominated by a logic of substitution that links different demands together, harbours the possibility of a more populist or revolutionary politics. In this context, fantasmatic logics may take the form of a narrative in which an internal obstacle (or ‘enemy within’) is deemed responsible for the blockage of identity, while promising a fullness or harmony to come. This logic is clearly evident in Leninst forms of Marxist discourse, in which a particular class enemy has to be forcibly overthrown (usually by revolutionary means) in the name of a universal class (the proletariat), so as to bring about complete human emancipation. 150

But it can equally apply to projects such as Thatcherism in which a failing social democratic consensus (condensed in the figure of the trade unionist qua ‘enemy within’) was opposed in the name of a ‘strong state and a free economy’ …

The predominance of the LOD in political practices in which the articulation of political discourse is dominated by a logic of combination that decouples demands, and addresses them in a punctual fashion by channelling them into the existing system of rule, harbours the possibility of a more institutionalist or reformist politics. Here the fantasmatic logics may be articulated by means of a narrative in which an external obstacle or enemy is deemed to be a threat to an already existing fullness and harmony. For example a ‘Marxist’ or ‘Communist threat’ … was presented … as a direct threat to South Africa’s ‘free enterprise’, ‘Christian values’ and ‘Western freedoms’. … In short, we witness the efforts to disarticulate the growing political opposition to the apartheid state in the naming of an external enemy which threatens the internal stability and prosperity of the country … coupled with the defence of a fully constituted and harmonious order in the here and now.

War on terror’ discourse, in which values and stability of liberal democracies are confronted by a foreign ‘axis of evil’, ‘international terrorism’ and an ‘arc of extremism’.

Logic of Equivalence, Logic of Difference

The logic of equivalence involves the simplification of signifying space, the logic of difference involves its expansion and complexification (citing LM 144).

The political logics of equivalence and difference (furnish) us with a conceptual grammar with which to account for the dynamicsof social change. They help show how social practices and regimes are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

Logic of Equivalence (LOE) and Logic of Difference (LOD)

– LOE (associative), captures the substitutive aspect of the relation by making reference to an ‘us-them’ axis: two or more elements can be substituted for each other with reference to a common negation or threat. They are equivalent not insofar as they share a positive property (though empirically they may share something in common), but, crucially, insofar as they have a common enemy … Entails the construction and privileging of antagonistic relations, which means that the dimension of difference on each side of the frontier is weakened, whether differences are understood as a function of demands or identities. For instance, a national liberation struggle against an occupying colonial power will typically attempt to cancel out the particular differences of class, ethnicity, region, or religion in the name of a more universal nationalism that can serve as a common reference point for all the oppressed; indeed, its identity may be virtually exhausted in its opposition to the oppressive regime. By contrast the LOD draws on other discourses in an attempt to break down these chains of equivalence. The age-old practice of ‘divide-and-rule’, for instance in which an occupying power seeks to separate ethnic or national groups into particular communities or indirect systems of rule, is invariably designed to prevent the articulation of demands and identities into a generalized challenge to the dominant regime (145).

– LOD (syntagmatic), captures the combinatory or contiguous aspect of the relation, which accounts not simply for differences in identity among elements, but also for keeping elements distinct, separate, and autonomous. Both dimensions are always present in the sense that each presupposes the other.

LOE and LOD thus emphasize the dynamic process by which political frontiers are constructed, stabilized, strengthened , or weakened. They elucidate the way one or another dimension acquires greater or lesser significance, even while each presupposes the other. (citing Laclau 2005, 79) (144).

In sum, the political logics of equivalence and difference comprise a descriptive framing device 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 show how social practices and regimes are contested, transformed, and instituted, thereby extending our grammar beyond social logics (145).

Thatcher Regime

LOE was mobilized to shift terrain away from the post-war consensus

range of diverse demands were linked together into a project that publicly contested the failing Keynesian welfare state project.

linked together demands for

free economy
strong state
traditional morality

This involved a form of populist politics successfully dividing existing ‘one nation’ welfare state consensus into two camps, those in favour of the newly proposed project versus those associated with the Keynesian post-war consensus (173).

Following groups made equivalent and then targeted by this new project:

public sector workers, trade unions, teachers, doctors, lawyers, immigrants and gays

Installing the Audit Regime in UK universities

‘Modernizers’ have constructed a series of antagonistic equivalences in order to establish political frontiers that make possible the installation of the new practices. Thus we have seen the ideological construction of ‘surplus’ versus ‘deficit’ departments, ‘research active’ versus ‘research inactive’ members of staff, ‘good recruiters’ versus ‘bad recruiters’ traditional’ versus ‘innovative’ modes of service provision, and so forth (176).

On the other hand, and at the same time, university managers and administrators have — by means of various logics of difference — sought to manage change by addressing demands and by changing the structures of governance, so as to prevent or displace public contestation.