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).
Category: ideology
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).
Fantasmatic logic
Consider first the relationship between fantasmatic logics and social practices. Though social practices are punctuated by the mishaps, tragedies and contingencies of everyday life, social relations are experienced and understood in this mode of activity as an accepted way of life. The role of fantasy in this context is not to set up an illusion that provides a subject with a false picture of the world, but to ensure that the radical contingency of social reality — and the political dimension of a practice more specifically — remains in the background. In other words, the logic of fantasy takes its bearings from the various ontical manifestation of radical contingency. …
In this context, we can say that the role of fantasy is to actively contain or suppress the political dimension of a practice. Thus, aspects of a social practice may seek to maintain existing social structures by pre-emptively absorbing dislocations, preventing them from becoming the source of a political practice. 146
The operation of fantasmatic logics can thus reinforce the social dimension of practices by covering over the fundamental lack in reality and keeping at bay what we have labelled ‘their real’. In this respect, logics of fantasy have a key role to play in ‘filling up’ or ‘completing’ the void in the subject and the structure of social relations by bringing about closure. In Zizek’s words, they ‘structure reality itself’ … fantasies are ‘the support that gives consistency to what we call “reality”‘ (citing Zizek in Sublime Object: 44) (147)
But how do fantasmatic logics relate to political practices? For is it not the case that political practices represent a rupture with the logic of fantasy, which we have described in terms of concealment? After all, political logics are linked to moments of contestation and institution, all of which presuppose contingency and all of which involve the attempt to defend or challenge existing social relations through the construction of social antagonisms. Nevertheless, though social antagonisms indicate the limits of social reality by disclosing the points at which ‘the impossibility of society’ is manifest, social antagonisms are still forms of social construction, as they furnish the subject with a way of positivizing the lack in the structure.
… while the construction of frontiers presupposes contingency and public contestation, this process does not necessarily entail attentiveness to radical contingency. In other words, radical contingency can be concealed in political practices just as much as it is in social practices. If the function of fantasy in social practices is implicitly to reinforce the natural character of their elements or to actively prevent the emergence of the political dimension, then we could say that the function of fantasy in political practices is to give them direction and energy, what we earlier referred to as their vector.
“it is the imaginary promise of recapturing our lost/impossible enjoyment which provides the fantasy support for many of our political projects and choices (citing Stavrakakis Passions 2005: 73). In addition, during the institution of a new social practice or regime, there are invariably political practices that actively seek to naturalize a newly emerging social structure or regime by backgrounding its political dimension through decision, institutionalization, and other means. This entails marginalizing whatever contestatory aspects remain from the sturggle to institute the new social structure. 147
In other words, radical contingency can be concealed in political practices just as much as it is in social practices (147).
In sum, whether in the context of social practices or political practices, fantasy operates so as to conceal or close off the radical contingency of social relations. 147
ideology social identity
- Because of the ultimate undecidability of the social world, discourse is a result of political decisions. We are not talking here about conscious decisions taken by some central decision makers on the basis of rational calculation, but rather about an endless series of de facto decisions, which result from a myriad of decentred strategic actions undertaken by political agents aiming to forge a hegemonic discourse.
- A discourse is forged and expanded by means of articulation, which is defined as a practice that establishes a relation among discursive elements that invokes a mutual modification of their identity. Articulations that manage to provide a credible principle upon which to read, past, present, and future events, and capture people’s hearts and minds, become hegemonic.
- Ideology can no longer be defined as a distorted representation of an objectively given social reality, since reality is always-already a discursive construction. However ideology can still be defined in terms of distortion, not of how things really are, but of the undecidability of all social identity.
- As such, ideology constructs reality as part of a totalizing horizon of meaning that denies the contingent, precarious, and paradoxical character of social identity. The construction of naturalizing and universalizing myths and imaginaries is a central part of the hegemonic drive towards ideological totalization. 15
Torfing, Jacob. “Discourse Theory: Achievements, Arguments, and Challenges” in David Howarth and Jacob Torfing, (eds) Discourse Theory in European Politics. Palgrave. 2005.
4 dimensions of socio-political reality
The irreducible presence of negativity means that any social edifice suffers from an inherent flaw or crack which may become visible in moments of dislocation. In such situations, new possibilities become available, enabling a subject to identify differently. Indeed there are a number of ways in which human beings can fill in the gap between experiencing dislocation and responding to it.
How dislocation of social relations can provoke political practices –>
political practices: struggles that seek to challenge and transform the existing norms, institutions and practices — perhaps even the regime itself — in the name of an ideal or principle. This entails the construction of political frontiers which divide the social space into opposed camps.105
But political practices also involve efforts on the part of the power bloc to disrupt the construction of antagonistic frontiers by breaking down the connections that are being forged between different demands.
… insofar as political movements are successful in challenging norms and institutions in the name of something new, political practices bring about a transformative effect on existing social practices. 105
dislocation is a concept we need in order to understand better the dimensions of the ideological and ethical.
dislocation: a moment when the subject’s mode of being is experienced as disrupted. Dislocations are those occasions when a subject is called upon to confront the contingency of social relations more directly than at other times 110.
There are 2 ways the subject can respond to a dislocation, either authentically or inauthentically. An authentic response is ethical, and an inauthentic response is ideological.
Political dimension
Ideological dimension Ethical dimension
Social dimension
The Social: forgetting the acts or decisions of ‘originary institution’ (which involved the rejection of those options which were actually attempted), … Reactivation (consists) of rediscovering, through the emergence of new antagonisms, the contingent nature of the so-called “objectivity” …
The Political:is about taking decisions in a contingent and ‘undecidable’ terrain, which involves radical acts of power and institution. The political is an ontological category distinct from the social, rather than an ontical or regional category.
The political starts with a demand that cannot be satisfied, if the demand publicly challenges the norm(s) of an institution
That is to say, a demand is political to the extent that it publicly contests the norms of a particular practice or system of practices in the name of a principle or ideal 115
… any political construction takes place against the background of a range of sedimented practices’, in which ‘the boundary of what is social and what is political in society is constantly displaced’ 116.
The moment of antagonism where the undecidable nature of the alternatives and their resolution through power relations becomes fully visible constitutes the field of the “political”‘ Laclau cited 117.
The character of the political consists is one of contesting sedimented social relations in the name of new ones in situations where undecidability and power have been brought to the fore 117.
Both the political and the social presuppose a connection with the ‘radical contingency of social relations’, for both are understood “in relation to a particular ontical manifestation of this radical contingency, namely, the public contestation of a social norm. Insofar as public contestation does not arise or is eschewed, we say that the social dimension is foregrounded. Insofar as this public contestation is initiated or affirmed through action, we say that the political dimension comes to the fore. The two dimensions are always present in social reality … the boundary between the social and political is not fixed, but ina state of constant flux 117.
The Ideological
A dislocatory experience in the field of social relations can provoke a political response. However it can also provoke an ideological response which:
aims to repair and cover over the dislocatory event before it becomes the source of a new political construction … the ideological dimension signals the way in which the subject becomes complicit in covering over the radical contingency of social relations by identifying with a particular discourse. In this sense, ideology involves the way a subject misrecognizesits real conditions of existence. Indeed the hold of this misrecognition inures or insulates the subject from vagaries of the structural dislocation that always threatens to disrupt it (117).
What we term the ‘grip’ of ideology’thus comprises a myriad of practices through which individuals are sustaind and reproduced. The ideological can thereby induce the ‘forgetting of political origins’ and it can enable subjects to live as if their practices were natural.
The Ethical
In our view, the space of the ethical — like the political, social, and ideological — is understood in relation to the radical contingency of social relations and the way in which the subject ‘responds’ to this ‘ontological lack’. But we reserve the concepts of the ethical and the ideological to speak about the different ‘ways‘ in which a subject engages in practices, be they social or political … This means that the concept of ethics in our approach is not reducible or equivalent to questions about normativity … with questions of right conduct … or dispositions (on how) to live the good life …
Instead, in our view, questions of ethics (and ideology) centre on the subject’s particular mode of enjoyment They address issues that arise from the different modalities of subjectivity in relation to the ultimate contingency of social existence. How does a subject relate to the contingency of social life that is disclosed in dislocatory events? How does it identify anew? How does it translate its ‘radical investments’ into social and political practices? How does a subject relate to its identifications and consequently to its own contingency? … modes of enjoyment are always embodied in material practices, and thus not completely reducible to conscious apprehension. (119)