not-all Žižek
quoting Stavrakakis,
the political becomes one of the forms in which one encounters the real, so that political reality is the field in which the symbolization of the real is attempted. (111)
Reactivation does not therefore consist of returning to the original situation, but merely of rediscovering, through the emergence of new antagonisms, the contingent nature of so-called “objectivity”
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).
– 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
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:
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.
(T)he discernement of social logics enables us to characterize practices or regimes by setting out the rules informing the practice and the kinds of entities populating it; political logics allow us to account for their historical emergence and formation by focusing on the conflicts and contestations surrounding their constitution; and fantasmatic logics furnish us with the means to explain the way subjects are gripped or held by a practice or regime of practices. Taken together, logics are by no means reducible to the empirical phenomena for which they are designed to account though neither are they accorded a fully transcendental role and function. … 213
(with regards to our social ontology) our commitment (is) to the radical contingency of social objectivity whether in the form of structures, agents or institutions, which in our view has important ramifications for our understanding of social change, political subjectivity, and the overall structuring of social relations (215).
Social Logics: not synonymous with causal mechanisms, capture the ‘patterning’ of social practices.
Regularity in dispersion: captures both the idea of social logics as a pattern and an open-endedness [139].
… rules are not reified entities that subsume practices and discourses; instead they enable us to describe and characterize the latter,
… logic is not ‘superhard’ whose identity can survive independently of the contexts within which it is instantiated or operative [140].
But social logics are not reducible to empirical contexts either. … in sum, we could say that with social logics, we aim to capture the ‘patterning’ of social practices, where such practices are understood in this regard as a function of the contextualized self-interpretations of key subjects. Social logics of competition … describe the way that actors interact with, and understand, each other as competitors. Or social logics of ‘individualization’ might capture those patterns of discursive articulations which, in the self-understanding of actors … isolating them from each other 140.
Political Logics: provide means to explore how social practices are instituted, contested, and defended — logic of equivalence, logic of difference— to investigate the way in which the traces of radical contingency associated with the original institution of practices and regimes can in certain circumstances be reactivated by subjects, thus enabling them to construct new meanings, practices and identities. “Since the very identity and significance of a social practice depends upon its institution, as well as the subsequent forgetting of its ignoble origins, political logics assist in the characterization of a practice or regime by showing how they emerge and are sedimented (106).
Political logics are most closely associated with the political dimension of social relations
Political logics are related to the institution of the social they are also related to it possible de-institution or contestation (142).
Fantasmatic Logics: account for the grip of an existing or anticipated social practice or regime. Fantasy is understood as the frame which structures the subject’s enjoyment.
looking at how subjects are gripped in different ways by the discourses with which they identify.
With the logic of fantasy we aim to capture a particularly powerful way in which subjects are rendered complicit in concealing or covering over the radical contingency of social relations.
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 existing mode of enjoyment and thus fantasmatic frame. When working in tandem with political logics, fantasmatic logics may be invoked to help explain why certain demands — or responses to demands — succeed in gripping or interpellating a particular constituency. Equally, they can be mobilized to account for the way explicit challenges to existing social structures or institutions are blocked (107).
The 3 logics are articulated together to account for a problematized phenomenon 133
.... our idea of a logic is not only set against the universalizing and necessitarian tendencies of the causal law paradigm, but it is also opposed to the particularised tendencies of the interpretivist paradigm (135)
… the logic of a practice comprises the rules or grammar of the practice, as well as the conditions which make the practice both possible and vulnerable 136.
Logic of the market
Clearly the way we conceptualize the market depends on whether it is a supermarket, a market in energy supply, a market in educational goods, and so on … the meaning of expressions such as ‘efficient allocation of resources’, ‘fair price’ or ‘supply and demand’ depends on the way we understand the key actors and terms associated with the specific market paradigm we have adopted. There is a clear relational network at stake here which the concept of a logic must try to capture and name. Crucial in this respect is the way actors themselves interpret their roles and activities 136.
In abstract terms .. a particular market comprises a particular set of rules or grammar that govern the arrangements and meanings that bring together buyers and sellers of goods and services.
Hence the logic of the market comprises:
– subject positions (buyers and sellers), objects (commodities and means of exchange), and a system of relations and meanings connecting subjects and objects, as well as certain sorts of institutional parameters (such as a well functioning legal system).
However, our concept of a logic also aims to capture the conditions that make possible the continued operation of a particular market practice, as well as its potential vulnerabilities. And this involves answering a set of connected questions: What were the conditions under which the institution of this market was made possible? What political struggles preceded its institution? What processes ensure its maintenance or question its hegemonic status? Logics must also provide the means with which to answer these sorts of questions 136-7.